


Bring the World Back Into Tune

by Marivan



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcoholic Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Angst, Angst and Feels, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Canon-Typical Violence, Cold Weather, Developing Relationship, Exiled Booker | Sebastien le Livre, F/M, Families of Choice, Fate & Destiny, First Kiss, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hot Weather, Jewish Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Kissing, Loneliness, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Soft Booker | Sebastien le Livre, figuring it out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marivan/pseuds/Marivan
Summary: At the safe house in Goussainville, he could barely disguise his interest.There was Andy and Quỳnh, after all, and Joe and Nicky. Was she supposed to be his, just 200 years late?Then, it all went to hell. Nile hurled herself from a window. Booker offered her his hand. She accepted. Everything changed. Nobody realized.---Booker and Nile are generally smart and usually rational immortal beings. They make decisions all the time. So why do Nile's visits always seem to bring warmth and sunshine to Paris?And why does this thing between them feel like destiny?Or, a Hades and Persephone fusion in which Booker and Nile find family, find each other, and find their fate.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 215
Kudos: 198





	1. In Medias Res

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the kink meme for the prompt! Thanks to the excellent Book of Nile meta on tumblr for the inspiration. Thanks to my high school Latin and Greek teachers for making my brain desperate to fill this prompt. Apologizes them for remixing their content so thoroughly. And, as always, thanks to the great folks on the discord for feeding and encouraging my love for our favorite immortals.
> 
> Title from Hadestown, because, for this prompt? duh.

_**Summer, Year 3 of Exile** _

Paris finds itself smouldering under its second massive heatwave in two months. The walls of Sébastien’s ancient building might actually be made of stone, which supposedly helps keep the temperatures down, but it is still hot as _balls_. And Sébastien, bless him, can’t seem to keep his hands off of her.

So they’ve compromised. They are twined together on his couch: her hand running through his hair, his hand on her waist, thumb rubbing beneath her tank top. The box fan is whirring away on the coffee table.

He’s been reading aloud to her, ever since they started _this_ , and she knows she should be trying to pay more attention to _Moby Dick_ since he picked it because they’d both never read it, but her head is pillowed against his shoulder and she keeps getting distracted by the broadness of his chest and the purring of his voice resonating against her ear.

A knock at the door causes both of their heads to jerk up and she catches his eyes. He moves to say something, to disentangle himself from her but she presses a finger to his lips. His eyes dart back and forth across her face, searching, but Nile smiles just enough to be reassuring and murmurs, “Stay.” Sébastien looks at the door, and then at her, and then at the door again, but he stops squirming and settles back into her side.

The knocking reruns a few moments later, this time with an aggravated, “I fucking swear…” in a female voice. Sébastien raises his eyebrows in question and Nile nods. I _t’s exactly who you think it is._ He moves to rise from the couch again and this time Nile pushes him back down with a hand to his chest. “Trust me,” she says, “it’ll be worth it.” The snort that comes out of him is uniquely Gallic but he relents.

The next noise from the door is the sound of something scratching against the lock. Then, the jangle of metal against stone and a soft curse. Sébastien, _finally_ catching up with the situation, hides his grin against the side of Nile’s head.

The scratching returns and a moment later the front door pops open, revealing Andy and Quỳnh.

“You’re out of practice, _ma choupette_ ,” Sébastien calls from the couch. Nile brings a hand to her mouth, covering her laughter.

“Booker,” Quỳnh taunts back. She takes two steps toward them with a playfully dangerous look on her face, but Andy stills her with a hand to her wrist.

“You two look cozy,” Andy says, “given that it’s 35 fucking degrees outside.”

The color rises in Sébastien’s cheeks and Nile brushes the back of her hand gently across the nearest one before shooting Andy her best haughty expression. “Very.”

Andy barks out a laugh and runs a hand through her hair. “Sure. Okay.”

Quỳnh, released from Andy’s hold, barrels towards them. She bends herself over the back of the couch, wrapping her arms around them both. “I have missed you,” she says before tumbling into their laps.

Even with the box fan rattling away, it is really too hot for this many bodies in this much contact and so Nile pulls Quỳnh into a hug and gives Sébastien the chance to stand and escape. Quỳnh hugs as fiercely as she fights and as she’s rocking Nile back and forth she whispers in her ear, “Thanks for helping me win the bet, dearest friend. His blush was very cute. And now, Andromache owes me dinner and dancing.”

Nile grins at Quỳnh and then looks over to where Andy has pulled a reluctant Booker into a hug as well, complete with a neck squeeze. These are her _people_ and maybe it’s the heat, but Nile thinks it’s the absolute and unfettered joy warming her from head to toe.

They visit the Louvre the next day, the four of them. They admire the art, as one does. Sébastien curls his fingers around her own and they stay tethered together for hours, his thumb rubbing gently when he gets engrossed in whatever they’re viewing. All of them linger especially over Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus.

“Is there something just a little off about his nose?” Andy ponders.

Sébastien elbows Andy sharply in the ribs. Nile and Quỳnh barely contain their amusement.

Later that night, when they finally settle in for bed, Sébastien pulls her into his arms, her back flush with his front. He drapes them both with a light sheet. Goosebumps pebble on Nile’s arm; perhaps there’s a slight breeze from the open window or maybe it’s just her reaction to Sébastien’s hand stroking lightly back and forth.

He buries his nose into the base of her neck. “You’re leaving,” he mumbles, as if the words fill his mouth with blood or cotton.

“Yes,” she says softly. He exhales sharply against her. “Quỳnh said something about Nazis and Normandy in her last text.”

“I wish--”

“Hey.” She turns over in his arms. His eyes are closed, his body tensed, shoulders practically vibrating. She takes his head in both of her hands.

“I know,” she whispers, “me too.”

In the morning, he makes her _crêpes suzette_ and kisses her languidly against the kitchen counter.

In the afternoon, he squeezes her hand in goodbye and closes the door on her and Andy and Quỳnh. He picks up Nile’s old dog tags from where they’ve spent the last two months on the sideboard and places them back around his neck. The balls of metal in the utilitarian chain prick where they land against his skin

By evening, the heat wave has broken into a calamitous thunderstorm. Rain pelts down against the street and sidewalk, wind rattles at his windows. He curls into bed with the flat of her tags against his palm and wakes up in the morning shivering from the precipitous temperature drop swept in by the storm.

\---

Nile can’t stop shivering. It’s not _that_ cold out; logically, it’s still the end of August. Nile has cozy layers and cold-weather-op gear in her go bag, and knows how to use them, thank you very much. But it has rained for three days straight, a cold hard, steady rain and her body aches for the warmth of sun against her face, the constant rattle of the box fan, the scorching heat of arms snaked around her torso, palms against her face and breasts and thighs.

The team had broken up a smuggling operation between right wing fascist groups in France and England. Destroying weapons and disabling boats and blackmailing individuals involved was exactly the sort of mission Nile usually thrived on: bad guys brought to their knees with a minimum of bloodshed. But even the roaring arson she and Joe set at their target’s headquarters failed to push the chill from deep in her bones.

The previous day’s activities seem to have reminded Joe how much he misses fire and so he and Nicky have built one on the hearth of the ancient sea-shanty they’re staying in on Guernsey. Nile thinks the plan is to grill -- _kebabs maybe?_ \-- but she hasn’t paid much attention. She sits with her knees drawn up to her chest on the stone floor, mesmerized by the dancing flames. She likes the warmth from the fire against her front, and the occasional draught skittering across her back. Joe notices her shiver and drapes his leather jacket across her shoulders. She looks up at him with a watery half-smile. He squeezes her shoulder, but says nothing.

All four of them leave her to her thoughts. Finally, the ache and the emptiness she’s been feeling coalesces into words. _I miss him._ And she feels weird about that thought -- _it’s only been three days_ and _that’s nothing, especially for them_ and _I’ve left him before and never felt this_ and _why now?_ \-- but nevertheless _I miss him_ stays stuck at the forefront of her mind for the rest of the evening.

As Joe is humming at the crackle of meat cooking over open flames, Nile notices Andy and Nicky standing together on the other side of the room, their heads bent together, in confidence. All she can make out from the conversation is Andy’s “you know what this means” and then Nicky’s grave nod before glancing her direction.

\---

Two days after she leaves, Booker gets a call from his department chair. The man is frantic: another teacher’s last minute leave of absence means that he needs Booker to pick up a section of Art History for the coming term. Booker agrees with alacrity, looking at the lone bottle of American bourbon on the top shelf of his hutch, untouched for more than a year now. Instead of drowning in the bottle, he drowns himself in ancient art, African and Islamic and Asian and Meso-American. He knows plenty about art, though his department chair doesn’t need to know _how_ he acquired his knowledge, but since he’s never needed to fake a Mayan stone carving, this is new territory for him.

Every inch of his kitchen table is covered, if not by books then by used cereal bowls and empty mugs. When the light in the alley outside his window blinks on, Booker realizes how many hours he has spent hunched over glancing between the books and his laptop. He leans back in his chair, hands cradling his neck, and his spine releases several satisfying pops. His thumb runs over the chain at the back of his neck. One of his eyes begins to twitch -- a sure sign of his exhaustion -- so he closes them both.

His brain immediately supplies the image of throwing pebble after pebble into the Thames with a chill settling around his shoulders.

 _100 years to go_ , he’d thought. It’d been his only thought for hours after they had left.

He had stood there, staring at the water, rubbing pebbles between his fingers, tossing them away, till the tide came in and the water began lapping at the toes of his boots. His fingers had ached from the cold in the air -- _surely it hadn’t been this cold earlier_ \-- but he had refused to put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Everything about the last few days had seemed blurred and distorted. The numbness, the burn of cold in his hands was just about the only thing that felt _real_.

He had chased the burn of the cold with the burn of alcohol. Vodka, for Andy, a whole bottle. He had crossed the Tower Bridge -- _how appropriate_ \-- and the wind had picked up along the river and whipped around his legs and bit into his face. He stood there for a long time taking it, bearing it. And then he had found himself staring up at the departures board at London Bridge Terminal and, sure, there were faster ways to get to France than the train to Dover and the ferry to Calais, but he had literally nothing but time. He wanted the passage to be windy and rough, to feel the pain of the cold metal railing on his palms as the ship rolled on the swells and his stomach clenched and dropped. He wanted to see France, the place he still, after all the years, thinks of as home, come, slowly, agonizingly, into view.

He had wandered Paris for days till he found a fittingly shabby apartment in a section of the city that still looked like the Paris he first came to as a young man with _liberté, égalité, fraternité_ ringing in his ears. He had bought himself a woolen pea coat and even when the rest of Paris was bundling themselves against the winter with scarves and hats and gloves, he didn't bother to button it, seeking icy wind against his chest, his heart.

Most of the time he couldn’t tell if he was numb from the alcohol or the cold as he stumbled his way home.

Booker has come to realize that in his first 200 years of immortality, he had learned how to be alone out of necessity, but he had never been good at it, never taken pleasure in it the way Andy sometimes did. With Quỳnh and with Nile, he had been reminded of the deep contentment of caring for others and being cared for in return.

He was still exiled, still hadn’t seen Nicky and Joe and knew he likely wouldn’t for years. He knows quick visits from Andy and Quỳnh will be all that they offer. Nile, though, Nile had bent the conditions of his exile to her will. But even she, with all her stubbornness and strength, could only bend things so far. Her visits were a gift; her leave-taking expected _so why does it hurt so fucking much?_

Still, he wasn’t seeking out the cold, like he had that first winter. He hadn’t touched the bottle of bourbon. And he had his students at the international school, teenagers he was teaching to learn from history’s many mistakes.

_Everything is going to be okay._


	2. Something Like Destiny

_**The following winter** _

Nile stands once again on the streets of Paris and absolutely grins. Sure, she’s spent plenty of time in the city over the last couple of years, but this is different. She is not here to deal with their long-lost immortal sister. The team is not on a break.

The day after their quiet celebration of Christmas in a beautiful rented home on the shores of Lake Como, Andy tugged Nile into the kitchen, while the other three were still lounging in the living room, wreathed in aroma of warm coffee and the glow of twinkling lights.

“You miss him,” Andy had said.

Nile ducked her head. She bit back a retort, _“and you don’t?”_ It would be easier, lying, avoiding the topic, making Andy angry. Nile didn’t want to have this conversation, maybe ever. Booker was exiled and obviously she’d broken the agreement, each time with a flimsier justification than before. The last thing she wanted, needed was Andy’s shit. But Andy had always been honest with her from their first fight in the drug runner’s plane and every moment since Nile’s calamitous introduction to immortal life. _Put on your big girl pants, Nile. Be an adult._ Their life was full of hard, inconvenient truths. _And hadn’t Booker’s actions just underscored that they, of all people, needed to talk about their feelings?_

Andy had seen them together over the summer, on the couch, at the Louvre. Nile did miss Sébastien. She did. But saying it so plainly? Out loud? _Damn when was the last time I felt this vulnerable?_

Nile tilted her head to the side, looking at Andy out of the corner of her eyes. “I do.”

“Go to him. For New Year’s.”

_Really?_ Nile’s head jerked up and her eyes searched Andy’s face for any sign that she was not serious. “But the exile--”

“Hasn’t stopped you before, kid.” Andy squeezed her shoulder and Nile, though slightly abashed, shot her a smile.

“Okay,” she says.

“Good.”

Nobody said anything else -- not Andy, not Joe or Nicky or Quỳnh -- but that evening Nile found a ticket to Paris waiting for her on her pillow.

So here she is, in Paris once again, about to be on his doorstep, and her head is full of doubts. _What if he’s not happy to see me? What if there’s someone else? What if… what if… what if…_

She takes a steadying breath. _Big girl pants, Nile._ She catches the exterior door when one of his neighbors leaves the building and slips inside. Then she’s standing before his door, in the same place a glass bottle fell and shattered and woke her from a dream, in the same place all this started two and a half years ago. Another breath. She knocks, three short wraps, knuckles on the wood.

She hears the thump of a book slam shut. A muffled “merde.” The scrap of metal chair legs on stone. The bolt being thrown back. The hinges creaking open. And then, “Nile?” all surprised and breathy and beautiful.

For a moment, she takes in the hair flopping into his wide eyes, his pronounced nose, parted lips, scruffier than usual beard and big cozy sweater. Then, she throws her arms around his shoulders and buries her face in his neck. His arms pull her in close.

_It feels like coming home._

Nile pulls back and places her hands on either side of his face. She finds fire in his eyes.

_God, this man._

She tilts her face up toward his. “Can I kiss you?” she breaths, her mouth almost brushing his.

“Always.” She feels his response as much as she hears it.

Her mouth curves into a smile. _They’ve talked about this, his overly-romantic streak._ Before she can gather the words to respond, he captures her lips with his and his hand curls around the back of her head. _Yes God yes yes yes._ An electric current runs between where his hands clutch at her, zipping from her neck to the small of her back. Sparks settle between her thighs. She feels his breath against her cheek and feels the molecules of her skin heat and merge and intertwine with his, despite them both still being fully closed. Kissing him, touching him is essential, urgent, everything.

Sébastien begins to pull back and Nile shamelessly chases the kiss. He says, “Come inside, _mon coeur_?”

She glances around and laughs, deep with delight. Her duffel lies discarded on the floor. The door to his apartment is still open.

“We’re worse than teenagers,” she says as she stoops to pick up her bag. His hand brushes her hip as they shuffle the few steps inside.

“Mmm I like to think I’m better at this than I was at 15, no?” His pleased smirk sends a thrill through her. _The things that mouth does to me._

He closes the door and she tosses aside her bag and then her hands are back upon him, skimming over his shoulders and arms and sides. She says, “You are very talented, _mon amour_.”

He presses a quick kiss to her forehead and she practically purrs. “It’s all for you, you know.”

His eyes search her face and she sees the tiniest bit of doubt, his old demon, sneak into the curve of his mouth. “And I, for you,” she says. His thumb runs across her jaw in reassurance. She draws her hand from his side around to his abdomen, relishing that she can touch him, all of him, ground him to her and be grounded in return. This small act delights her almost as much as his kiss. Her hand moves up his front and stills on the lump over his sternum.

“Seb?” She presses at the lump, “Is this…? Her mind whirls. Her hands scramble to his collar. She feels the familiar series of metal balls. “Do you…?” She pulls at the chain and he tilts his head back to allow her access. The twin pieces of metal spill into her palm. She knows without looking whose name is embossed upon them.

“You left them after that first summer.”

“I know. I--”

“It helps me feel closer to you… when you’re not here.”

She hears the naked truth in his words and sees the depth of despair and adoration in equal measures in his eyes. It scares her: how fast and how deep they have fallen together, how inevitable it feels, like destiny.

“I missed you, too. Every damn day.” She presses a kiss to his jaw. She murmurs, “Take me to bed, Sébastien.”

He brushes the back of her hand that holds the identification tags and she releases them into his palm. He pulls the chain over his head and drops them on the sideboard, in the place she’s seen them rest the last two times she visited him. The significance of this small act overwhelms her, but before she can delve too much into what it means for her and him and them, his voice is gravel against her ear: “ _Oui, ma reine_.” And then his hands are lifting at the back of her thighs and she is wrapping her legs around his waist and he is carrying her off to their bed.

\---

They had fallen asleep pressed together as close as could be, huddled under the duvet. Booker awoke in the morning with sweat prickling at the back of his neck and the covers kicked onto the floor.

Nile’s weight rests firmly against his shoulder and his side, anchoring him to the bed. When her soft palm lands against his cheek, he looks down at her and is met with her dark eyes, wide and soft. He is stunned by her beauty. He always is, true, but right now her skin glows in the early morning light and her hair is wrapped in emerald green silk and her touch is all tender affection.

“ _Ma reine_.”

“Hi.”

_I will never not be stunned by you_ , he thinks.

“Stay,” he says, his voice still clouded with the morning. He feels her tense. _Booker, you fucking idiot. Now is not the time for_ that _conversation._ “...In bed,” he amends, hurriedly. “With me. This morning.”

“Of course, Sébastien,” she says as she moves to straddle him. He groans and reaches for her. She catches his hand before it can make contact with her skin. “But we _are_ having _that_ conversation later.”

“ _D’accord._ ”

“Good.” All at once she leans down, presses his hand against her breast, and grinds her hips back against his. The pleasure that rips through him tears a breathless moan from his lips.

Many orgasms and much, much later, when he emerges from the shower, he finds Nile leaning over his kitchen table, eating an apple. She’s in a tank top and shorts and it should be much too cold for that sort of look, but he appreciates it nevertheless. Her braids spill over one shoulder as she flips through one of his art history books. She doesn’t notice him at first, and he spends a minute just taking her in.

This relaxed, confident woman is a far cry from their first meeting when she had sat at their table in Goussainville, shoulders hunched, brave and curious but ready to fight or flee. He remembers her purple shirt, the gold cross at her throat, the small, tentative bites she’d taken of Nicky’s cooking. Days earlier, he had felt her die, felt the knife in her neck, rubbed at the same spot he still sometimes felt phantoms of robe cutting into his flesh. He felt inexorably drawn to this complete and utter stranger. Not attraction, exactly, but a deep and inherent need to be known by her, _liked_ by her.

_There was Andy and Quỳnh, after all, and Joe and Nicky. Was she supposed to be his, just 200 years late?_

He knew he had barely disguised his interest, taking her in from head to toe. He thanked whatever deity that might still be listening to him that Nicky and Joe and Andy were all too distracted to call him out on his response to Nile’s question. He hadn’t died fighting _for_ Napoleon, after all, he’d died for _running away_ from Napoleon’s army. But he was so sure she’d think badly enough of him in just a few short days, given the mess he’d gotten all of them into, that he couldn’t bear to lower her opinion of him any further.

In spite of all of that, here she is in his home, under no other pretense than wanting to spend time with him, looking relaxed and content.

_Is there really such a thing as fate?_ Well, that’s a thought he can’t deal with right now, so he shakes it from his head and calls her name as he steps into the main room of his flat.


	3. Fighting For You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: this chapter contains Booker and Nile's reactions to a racist remark made toward Nile by a stranger. The remark itself is never specified. This is justified in the world of the story by Nile not understanding French. More importantly, the comment itself is never specified because the point of including this moment at all is to explore how both she and Booker react to it and how it effects their relationship, not depict the trauma.
> 
> Nevertheless, if you wish to skip this bit entirely, stop reading at "he whispers a 'thank you' into Nile's ear as they turn away" and pick up again at "Sebastien has plans for New Year's."
> 
> Many thanks to @nevermindirah for Booker's wife's name. Why come up with your own, when someone else has already put thought into it? 
> 
> I hope you enjoy chapter 3!

_When he emerges from the shower, he finds Nile leaning over his kitchen table, eating an apple. She’s in a tank top and shorts and it should be much too cold for that sort of look, but he appreciates it nevertheless. Her braids spill over one shoulder as she flips through one of his art history books._

“Nile?”

She hears his voice call her name and she looks up and smiles. He’s trimmed his beard and his hair is still wet and he’s combed it straight back. She supposes that this is how he looks most days at work: a button down and trousers, neatly groomed. He looks good -- _let’s be real, he looks good in everything_ \-- but she realizes she’s partial to his more relaxed look, leather jackets and linen shirts and hair flopping to the side.

He comes to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her.

“These are for school, yeah?” she says, gesturing at the mountain of books on the table. “Can I help?”

“You don’t have to.”

She leans back against him. “I know. I want to.”

He presses a kiss to her shoulder and then lets her go, pulling out a chair for her to sit down.

“We’re finishing up the Renaissance after the holiday,” he begins, settling next to her. “And then I need to zip through the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical Movements in Europe so we can get to the actually interesting stuff that emerges in the 20th century.”

“Hey now, Caravaggio _slaps_. How can you not go ga-ga over such stunning _chiaroscuro_?”

He laughs, and she loves that she has been able to pull that delightful noise out of him. “I will be sure to tell my students of the prevailing contemporary opinion.”

“Good. I forgive you for calling my man Caravaggio uninteresting.” She pauses to look at him and is struck by how content he looks, sitting here, surrounded by books, thinking about his students, talking with her about art. _Oh, I could get used to this._ “What can I do?”

He hands her a piece of paper containing a list in his looping script. “Find me reference images. I was just about to start before I got -uh- interrupted last night. They were all starting to blend together and if you have actual opinions…”

“You want me to pick what you’re going to teach?”

He doesn’t meet her eyes and she thinks there might be just the hint of pink rising in his cheeks. “I mean there are things I know I want.” He shrugs his elbow in the direction of the paper he’s just handed her. “But yeah,” he says, finally _finally_ looking at her. “I trust you.”

Her stomach swoops at the openness in his eyes and his words. There is no other response but to lean over and press her lips to his and run a hand down the side of his face.

Hours pass in a haze of art books and color-coded sticky notes. The soft clacking of keys on his laptop keeps them both company. Finally, she passes him back her list of artworks. He scans the list, glances up at her, looks back down. She knows there is worry fighting to spread across her face.

“No. I am _not_ teaching Napoleon Crossing the Alps.”

She is prepared for this. “It is an excellent example of Neoclassical idealization, of trying to legitimize the present by presenting it in the visual language of a revered, accepted cultural past.”

“I know. _I know._ I just--”

She sees the ghosts of his past draw close, his glance up to where she knows the bourbon sits.

“Hey,” she says softly. He doesn’t move. A little louder, “Hey.” His eyes snap to hers. “Pair it with some primary source reading about how terrible it was being a footsoldier on Napoleon’s campaigns. Boom: the man’s knocked off his pedestal.”

He exhales loudly and reaches for her hand. He squeezes her palm, full of thanks and reassurance and love. She squeezes back, as if to say _I know, me too_.

\---

That evening they have _that_ conversation, as promised. She’s only here for a few days. It’s no surprise, but he feels his heart clench nevertheless. The trip comes with Andy’s endorsement and the tacit approval of the others and that is… surprising, but good? It _must_ be good.

After laying everything out, she snakes her arms around him, tucks her head against his shoulder. “Let’s make the most of it, yeah?”

All he can do is nod and hold her.

At Nile’s insistence, they leave his apartment the next day. Paris had decided to put her best foot forward for Nile’s visit and the weather is practically balmy for the end of December. They step out onto the street in their winter coats and immediately return to the apartment to shed the layers, laughing the whole way.

They’ve agreed just to walk, meander, stop when they spy something interesting or tasty. Nile insists on real _croissant_ from a real _pâtisserie_. And if Booker kind of, sort of steers them in the direction of an outdoor market he heard some of his students mention before the holiday? Well, it’s only because he suspects Nile will love it.

Nile _does_ love it. She smells each and every handmade soap, even though he knows she only changes her skin care routine under duress. She flips through racks of prints and postcards and admires the care and attention put into all of them. He stays by her side throughout, a hand at the small of her back or fingers enmeshed with hers. She occasionally glances up at him with such joy on her face and he wants to give her the _world_.

As Nile fingers some handwoven shawls, Booker registers that someone has called his name. “Monsieur Rivière!”

He turns around slowly to see a lanky young man waving his whole arm back and forth vigorously. He can feel Nile’s eyes on him and a question on her lips. The boy lopes over to them.

“ _Benoît, bonjour! Ça va_?”

“ _Bien. Et toi?_ ”

“ _Tres bien._ ” He sees Benoît’s glance at Nile, with a question he is too shy or too polite to ask. Booker switches to English. “Ms. Freeman, this is Benoît, one of the students in my art history class. Benoît, this is my friend Ms. Freeman.”

Benoît sticks his hand out in her direction. She takes it and says, “ _Enchanté_.” He ducks his head in agreement and then releases her hand, turning back to his teacher with a stream of questions that Nile can’t quite follow, but seem related to the market and art and plans for New Year’s. He is full of energy and enthusiasm. He seems like a good kid. And she can tell from Sébastien’s soft smile and warm eyes that he adores Benoît and all of his young charges and having these kinds of conversations.

After Benoît scrambles off to join some of his friends at the coffee stand, Nile turns to face Sébastien. “I’m so proud of you,” she says softly, “but Rivière? Really?”

He shrugs, the tips of his ears pinking. “Seemed appropriate, given why I was doing it.”

“Something about how you never step in the same river twice?”

“Sure,” he says, finally meeting her eyes. His are intense, hot on her face with barely disguised emotion.

_Oh. OH._

“Please tell me that you didn’t become a teacher because of me.”

“No, I didn’t,” he concedes. “But I did -- I do -- want to be worthy of you, Nile Freeman.”

And so she kisses him, public be damned. She does spare the thought that she hopes Benoît and his friends are very far away because the quick dart of her tongue into his mouth clearly belies Sébastien’s statement that they are “friends.”

He pulls back and they are both scorched and breathless.

“Shall we?” he practically pants, taking her hand in his. She laughs and tugs him towards the next vendor’s stall.

They continue on, basking in the feeling of being close to each other. Then, Sébastien pulls up short. He is looking at two older white women with pillows on their laps, draped with strips of fine white lace. They are chatting contentedly with each other and moving a whole array of bobbins with practiced ease. Nile glances up at Sébastien. He shakes his head ever so slightly, as she knows he does when he’s trying to dislodge something from his past. “Mélanie-- she used to--” his head tilts in the direction of the women and their flying fingers and threads. “You would call it her ‘side-hustle.’” Nile snorts a laugh and rubs her thumb over the back of his hand.

“Let’s go talk to them.” She tugs at his hand. He stays put. She tugs again, and he relents. They weave through the crowd and, arriving at their stall, Sébastien greets them warmly. Nile admires the other strips and rolls and doilies of lace on display. She catches him saying something about “ _ma mère_ ” and, as essential as the lie is, Nile hates it. Done admiring their craft, she slots herself back against his side, and watches him practically charm the pants off the two old women with his eager smiles and specific questions. After a few more minutes, he says his goodbyes and he whispers a “thank you” into Nile’s ear as they turn away.

Then something stops him in his tracks. He looks at her and then over his shoulder at the lace-making women. His jaw clenches hard.

She starts to look back at the women. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Just. Don’t.”

It takes Nile a minute of the tense silence between them to process, but then she says, “They said something, didn’t they?” He exhales sharply and closes his eyes, anguish curling across his face. It’s all the confirmation she needs. She’s not naive. She’s a black woman living in a white world, on the arm of a handsome white man. A handsome white, French man, in an increasingly facist France. She sighs. “What they think doesn’t change anything, Sébastien. Let’s go.”

“No.” He squeezes her hand, then takes a step back and drops it. He returns to the women and releases a litany of angry, hissed French. She sees their expressions flip from surprised to shocked to indignant.

One of them begins to argue back. He says, “ _C’est fini_ ,” hard and final. Then he turns and uses his size and shoulders to part the crowd in making a bee-line back to her.

\---

Neither of them speak till they get back to the apartment. As soon as the door is closed behind them, as soon as they are _safe_ , he wraps his arms around her, squeezes her to him. “I’m so sorry, Nile.”

“Don’t--” she begins and then: “Sébastien, what are you apologizing for?”

“The situation. Losing my temper. I don’t know, Nile, I just--”

“Hey.” She pulls his face so he has no choice to look at her. He sees tears resting in the corners of her eyes. “Nobody -- _nobody_ \-- has ever defended me like that. I didn’t _need_ you to do it, but you did. That means something. A lot, actually.”

He sees her take a shaky breath, sees a tear spill down one of her cheeks. “Couch. Now.”

She nods and they settle together and he gathers her in his arms. Her tears soak into his shirt just below his collar and he knows Nile will apologize profusely for it when she realizes later. But right now he can be her anchor in a world full of senseless hurt.

Even though he knows that Nile will slip away at some point that evening to text Copley that he might have some clean-up work to do, as Booker sits with his actions that afternoon, he decides he has no regrets. Nobody else, nobody in the entire world, will ever be able to see Nile the way he does. She has helped him -- helped him in innumerable ways -- make a better life for himself. If he can make the world a little easier, a little less hurtful for her, he will do so till the end of his days.

\---

Sébastien has plans for New Year’s. Nile knows the man has a romantic streak a mile wide and limited opportunities in the last 200 years to indulge himself. She becomes convinced he’s going to take her out dancing, to some ritzy club where they’ll sip expensive cocktails and he’ll teach her how to slow dance, properly.

Instead, he tells her to dress comfortably, and leads her down to the Seine. They spend the night with a blanket pulled around their shoulders, murmuring to each other and getting lost in the lights and the stars reflecting on the water.

They stay past-midnight, past the cop on the graveyard shift making his rounds, till the rosy fingers of dawn break over the Paris skyline. Just before they rouse themselves enough to pack up and head home, when they are both drowsy from the good wine and early hour and each other, Sébastien curls into her and says, “I think you bring the warmth every time you come to Paris.”

She smiles at him fondly and runs her fingers through his hair. “Whatever you say, love.”

\---

And then, two days later, she’s standing at his door, and it’s time for her to leave.

He kisses her hard and fast and brutal, leaving her lips swollen and bruises down her neck. He knows they won’t last long, but he feels compelled to leave some mark of him on her as she departs.

The very last thing she does before she shoulders her duffel and walks out of his life for however long it will be till she can manage to come back, is pick up her old dog tags from the sideboard. She weighs them in her palm and then spreads the chain between her hands. He ducks down and she slides the necklace over his head and settles it around his neck. She places her hand over his heart and a quick kiss against his lips and she is gone.

\---

Nicky has the radio on -- the 70s and 80s Italian pop that he loves and Joe teases him for, mercilessly -- as he putters around the kitchen in the Lake Como house, cleaning up from dinner and getting ready for the morning. Nile’s itinerary says that she’ll be returning to them tomorrow afternoon and he’s got bread rising and spare-ribs defrosting in preparation for one last big, comforting meal before they buckle down for a string of jobs.

When the music is interrupted by the three sharp blasts of the emergency warning, Nicky comes to a standstill.

“ _A massive, freak blizzard has swept down from the Alps blanketing most of central France in almost a foot of snow in the last two hours. All train and bus services between Paris, Lyon, and Marseille have been suspended due to unsafe conditions. Government officials in France are urging everyone to stay at home and venture out only in case of emergency. Additionally, residents of Switzerland and Northern Italy should prepare for a significant drop in temperatures overnight._ ”

Nicky shuts the radio off. He looks out the window and, even here, the snow is falling steadily. _Fuck_.

“Joe,” he shouts. “Andy. Quỳnh.” Footsteps pound in different parts of the house and in moments they have gathered around the kitchen island.

“Habibi?”

“What’s wrong, Nicky?”

“I’m fine,” he huffs. “Has Nile left yet?”

“Her first train was supposed to leave Paris at 1100,” Joe replies.

“Have the rest of you checked the weather lately?” Nicky continues. They shake their heads and Quynh pulls out her smartphone. After a couple of taps, she slides the phone into the middle of the island, face up. The screen contains a map, the outlines of western Europe, painted in bands of light blue and light pink.

They all look at each other with haunted, knowing eyes.

“Fuck.”


	4. The Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings for this chapter: Canon-typical violence (in reality and in dreams), depiction of Booker's use of alcohol as a coping mechanism.
> 
> Our world may be in crisis, so here have some fictional crisis instead.

**Spring, Six Months after the Prospect of Whitby, Year One of Exile**

_Crimson wool gliding over long, elegant fingers. Exhilarating cold. A gun barrel. A splash of water. The slice of a knife against skin. A spurt of bright red blood. Hazy morning light. Icy wind in long dark hair. The sound of glass shattering and--_

Nile gasps awake. Her head is pounding, whirling. Nile stuffs on a pair of slippers and creeps out to the kitchen. She’s started making tea for herself after having one of her dreams; herbal and floral, she’s not especially picky. She just needs something to anchor her in reality -- _she’s Nile and she’s here and she’s alive_ \-- and the hot tea warms her hands around the mug and her insides where it pools in her belly.

Nile’s got the kettle on the stove and is sitting slumped at their tiny kitchen table, when Nicky pads into the room and immediately drops down next to her. One of his big hands strokes down her back.

“Bad dream?”

She nods.

“The usual?”

None of them have mentioned Quỳnh’s name since that first night in Goussainville, but they know, know what finding Nile in the kitchen at night or a dirty mug in the sink in the morning _means_.

Nile begins to nod, when something clicks in her tired, dream-addled brain. She turns her head to look at Nicky. “No, actually.”

He continues rubbing soothing circles into her back, but she notices that something in his expression, in the set of his jaw, changes. “Do you wish to speak about it?”

Nile drops her forehead to the table. “There was red and it was cold and the sounds of glass shattering and--”

The kettle begins whistling on the stove. Nile jumps at the sounds.

“I’ll get it,” Nicky says softly, with one last rub down her back before he stands and moves to turn off the burner and pour out the water for Nile’s tea.

When he returns, he presses the mug into Nile’s hands and her fingers curl around it.

Nile exhales and turns her head back to meet Nicky’s gaze. “I don’t think she’s drowning anymore,” and then, “Shit, what do we tell Andy?”

\---

Saturday morning begins with Quỳnh sitting across the tiny kitchen table from Booker. Tea for her. _Caffè corretto_ for him. They stare at each other.

In the last twelve hours, or so, they have come to an uneasy truce. Booker fully admits that shooting Quỳnh was not exactly the most hospitable way to welcome a guest, someone he supposes is a sister. In his defense, he aimed only to incapacitate: a clean shot to the thigh, which sent Quỳnh plummeting to the ground.

“Is this what they call ‘getting shot’?” she had exclaimed from the floor. Booker nodded. The impassiveness on her face parted with an enormous grin. “You are my first, Booker. It is quite the experience.”

Then, she was flying at him, a whirl of red wool and long black hair and flashing eyes. Booker found himself pinned beneath her, an elbow to his larynx. She prised the gun from his hand and sat back on her haunches. Booker sucked in a breath. “So tell me,” she says, “how does this work?”

Booker’s eyes widened. “No, I don’t think so.” He tried to sit up, but her hand struck at him and gripped his throat. He flinched. _Not the neck not the neck not the…_ “It’s a semi-automatic,” he had said, desperate, pulling away from her. She released him and he fell back with a sigh. “Just put your finger on the trigger and pull.”

“This?” She pointed to the small lever at the crux of the gun. He nodded. _This is going where I think--_

In the next instant, there was blinding, shooting pain through his left shoulder.

“Fuck!”

Quỳnh cackled. “Oh, this is going to be quite fun.”

It was not fun, not in the slightest. Between pulling knives from unimaginable places on her person -- even a garotte wire, which was honestly pretty impressive -- and her newfound fascination with guns, it was a long, painful introduction. His apartment was in shambles, and there were absolutely some pieces of cutlery that he will throw away rather than try to eat with ever again, but, as seems to be the norm in Booker’s very long life, he has survived.

Booker had privately always thought Joe was romanticizing Quỳnh a when he called her a “pit viper in a fight,” but, no, that was just what she was, striking with speed and accuracy whenever Booker least expected it.

When Booker had regained consciousness -- _how many hours? days? later_ \-- to Quỳnh’s yawn, he had taken her by the shoulders and bundled her off into bed, his bed. She had squeaked at the softness of the mattress and buried her face in the pillows with a grin, curled into herself. “Thank you, Booker,” she said, all earnestness and open emotion -- _from a woman who had killed him multiple times and wounded him in countless other ways_ \-- and fell asleep almost instantly. In a small act of spite, Booker did not pull the covers over her on his way out.

Now, a new day has dawned. Quỳnh’s movements have been loose and easy, unthreatening, but Booker still feels the tension across his shoulders; his eyes rarely stray from her. Except for Quỳnh’s quiet request for hot tea, neither of them has spoken. The brandy in his coffee flares in the back of his throat and he sighs at the pleasure in a pain he alone can control.

And then, there is a knock at the door. Three sharp raps, knuckles against wood.

Quỳnh’s head jerks around to the door and then back at Booker. He stands, steadying himself on the table. Neither says anything.

He opens the door just a crack, recognizes the brush of eyelashes on dark skin and the determined set of jaw, opens the door further.

“Nile?”

“Yeah,” she says, arms folded across her chest. “Seems like you’ve got company.” Her eyes flick over his shoulder and he huffs a small laugh.

“Come in.”

He steps aside and Nile -- _Nile_ \-- enters his apartment, back ramrod straight.

“You’re the new one,” Quỳnh breathes.

“And you’re not in a coffin under the sea,” Nile responds. Booker ducks his head to hide his smile. _Blunt as ever._

Quỳnh rises, graceful as liquid. “I am not.”

In the span of a blink, Quỳnh has a knife to Nile’s throat. Nile doesn’t flinch. She says, “Like hell I’m playing this shitty game.” Booker can’t see Nile’s face, but he’s certain there’s a flash of smirk there before Nile sends Quỳnh’s knife clattering to the floor and twists the woman’s elbow into the small of her own back.

Nile hauls them both around to face Booker, who’s still standing by the door. Nile’s eyes are glaring daggers at him, but Quỳnh just laughs and says, to him, he supposes, “I like her.”

\---

In short order, Nile finds herself sitting at a cramped kitchen table with two people she did not expect to see for years, let alone together. Both of them have fairly recently tried to kill her and she is so not ready for whatever is about to come next.

“Can someone please explain to me what the fuck is going on here?”

“You are very direct, Nile.”

Nile sees Booker raise his eyebrows as he takes a sip of his coffee and can barely restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

But neither Booker nor Quỳnh say anything else. They keep eyeing each other, like the other might erupt at any moment. Nile sighs.

“Alright,” she tries again, “you two don’t seem to like each other. Why?”

The both begin speaking at once, turning to her. _Now I know what mom must have felt like when my brother and I got into trouble._ She raises a hand and, thankfully, they stop talking.

“Booker, you first.”

“Only that she’s killed and maimed me continuously for the last two days.”

“Three,” says Quỳnh with a smirk. “And you deserved every instant of the pain I gave to you for what happened to my brothers at your hand.”

 _This woman is dangerous_ and _crazy._ Nile told Nicky and Joe that she would find Quỳnh and report back. She has found Quỳnh. She likes Booker fine, but not enough to get between him and a mad, formerly-drowning woman who’s angry about the torture Joe and Nicky endured in Merrick’s lab. Forced captivity would be a trigger for Nile too, were she in Quỳnh’s shoes.

“Well, then,” Nile says, rising slowly from the table. “You two have fun sorting things out.”

She turns to leave, when a hand catches her wrist and she hears a frantic, “No!” in two voices.

She pulls at her wrist and the grip -- Booker’s, the hand is much too big to be Quỳnh’s -- slackens, then falls away. Her jaw sets and she’s sure her eyes are flaring with anger. She turns back around to face them. Booker opens his mouth to say something. “Don’t,” she spits. He has the good grace to look suitably quailed.

She leans on the table, propped between both hands, looking down at them. “Give me one good reason to stay.”

Quỳnh, unlike Booker, meets her gaze. “I need someone to teach me... about everything.”

Nile nods, considering. “I’m sure Andy would be--”

“No.”

Both Nile and Booker snap to look at her. Quỳnh sits back, looks down at her hands folded in her lap. It is more vulnerable than Nile figured she would _ever_ see this woman.

“I can’t,” Quỳnh continues, “I’m not ready. Not yet.”

Nile glances at Booker, who’s looking at her. He nods at her silent question. “We’ll teach you,” Nile says.

Quỳnh’s face breaks into the most winsome smile. She reaches forward and grabs Niles face with both hands and presses a kiss against each cheek. She sits back and turns once again to Booker, who nods and ducks his head.

Though not at all what she expected when she arrived in Paris, Nile nods as well. “Let’s get to work.”

\---

When they arrive outside the Monoprix, Booker says, “Alright. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Oh hell no.” _After the shit she did to Booker? Not happening._

“This is girl stuff.”

“Says the man who packed me a change of clothes within hours of meeting me.”

“I just don’t think--”

Quỳnh approaches the sliding doors and yelps when they open without her touch. Booker and Nile both spin toward her.

“It’s magic,” Quỳnh breaths.

“Not magic, just electricity,” Nile growls. She sets her jaw, grabs both of them by the wrist. This is going to be a long fucking day. “Let’s go.”

Nile feels like a mother leading her ducklings around, one hyperactive and mischievous, the other sullen and mullish. Quỳnh’s fingers reach out and touch everything as they wind through the clothing racks in the women’s department. She lingers over bright reds and floral prints, royal blues and hot pinks. Nile throws an occasional glance over her shoulder to make sure Booker is following them. He is, though he occasionally looks like he’s 10 seconds from bolting.

Nile selects a smattering of shirts and pants and sweaters and dresses and then ushers them both towards the fitting rooms. The fitting room attendant looks at the enormous stack in Nile’s arms and her mouth curls downward in displeasure. _You try outfitting a woman who last remembers the reign of Henry VIII_ , Nile aches to retort, but holds her tongue.

Nile resigns herself to helping Quỳnh in the fitting room booth, and for a moment wishes she could trade places with Booker who is trying to make himself appear as small and unobtrusive as possible in a wooden chair at the end of the corridor.

“Where do these go?” Quỳnh asks, holding up a pair of black leggings.

“Your legs.”

Quỳnh’s mouth falls open. “They’re much too small for that.”

Nile takes the garment out of Quỳnh’s hands. “See,” she says, pulling the fabric in multiple directions, “they stretch.” Quỳnh’s brow furrows but before she can ask anything else, Nile says, “just try putting them on.”

Quỳnh shimmies into them and her eyes absolutely light up. She squats down then stands up. Does it again. She throws back the curtain on the fitting room and rushes over to Booker. “Look!” she cries and kicks a leg up and out, fast and deadly. He looks, tries to catch Nile’s eye for some hint of how to react, but Nile knows her face must be an unhelpful mix of bewilderment and awe. Never before have leggings brought someone this much delight.

“They look great, Quỳnh,” he mutters. She punches him in the shoulder, harder than necessary.

“Booker, I can move.”

“I can see that.”

“Nile, please tell me there are more of these.”

Nile nods and drags Quỳnh back into the fitting room, but Quỳnh’s discovery of modern leggings has created a monster. Quỳnh wants to try on anything she can get her hands on. Leggings give way to sundresses -- “acceptable” -- and jeans -- “whyyy?” -- to lace thongs -- “scratchy” -- and push-up bras -- no words but a very satisfied smirk -- to hoodies -- “like Nicolò” -- and sneakers -- “good for quick escapes.”

By the time they leave, Booker’s arms are laden with full shopping bags and he is wearing a mildly put upon expression, which Nile thinks might be a mask but doesn’t push. In a dizzying change from their first interaction, Quỳnh practically skips along at Nile’s side.

Though the fitting room attendant was done with them long before they were done with the fitting room, no knives were pulled and nobody died, accidentally or otherwise. Nile deems it a success.

\---

  
The moment they return to his flat, Booker heads straight for the nearest whiskey bottle. He pours out a glass of the amber liquid, checks to make sure it’s not the good Kentucky bourbon -- _the import taxes make that shit expensive_ \-- and then drowns the glass in one go. It burns hot and sharp in his throat and his eyes water but after hours of numbness at least it’s something. He pours himself another glass, feels Nile’s scornful eyes on him, decides he can’t care about that right now.

As he watches Nile and Quỳnh bustle around his flat, cutting tags and folding clothes, he feels his fingers twitch against his thigh as thoughts rattle around his head. Quỳnh killed him in this very room just days ago, kept him in a suspended state of pain and panic, and now she’s waltzing around playing dress up. Nile is here and vacillating between mothering him and loathing him. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to think. He _does_ know that the whisky will make the torrent in his mind lessen to a drizzle, at least for a while. So he sits and he drinks and he lets Nile and Quỳnh do whatever they are doing. The world and its sounds begin to fade in the swirl of amber in his glass.

Quỳnh’s voice -- “Booker, we’re going to bed” -- cuts through his stupor. _We? Bed?_ He pushes himself to his feet. The door to the bedroom clicks shut. In several long strides he is there, throwing the door open. “Absolutely not.” He stops when his brain finally arranges the image before him. Quỳnh in pajama pants with smiling crescent moons (new, clearly) is flopped back against his pillows and Nile is sitting on the edge of his bed in shorts and a tank top tying a silk scarf around her braids. _They look almost like lovers_ comes unbidden to his mind and he ignores the roil of emotions that flash through him hot and fast. “This,” he says pointing between the two of them, “is not happening.”

Nile finishes tying a knot in her scarf and he sees the set of her jaw before she speaks. “There is one double bed and one couch,” she says slowly, “and three of us.” A pause. “You want to sleep in here with Quỳnh?”

He almost chokes. _Fuck no I want to get as far away from her crazy as I can but somehow I’ve agreed to live with her -- her AND Nile -- for who knows how long._ Instead, he says, “She almost killed you this morning.”

“She has killed you and yet we’re all still here, aren’t we?”

“But--”

“I’m a marine, Booker. I can take care of myself.”

He turns and slams the bedroom door. _That woman is too stubborn for her own good._

\---

It takes Nile for-fucking-ever to fall asleep.

She thought that when she and Booker had exchanged looks this morning, they would be in on Mission: Educate Quỳnh together. Instead, he has been nothing but a useless lump or a thorn in her side.

Nile gets that psychological wounds take much longer to heal than physical ones, especially for them. She gets that Quỳnh did indescribably horrible things to him in those three days, even if he probably deserved them. She even gets it must be jarring to have his former nemesis transform into a delightful chaos child so quickly. But still. _Dude_.

But the thing that Nile really can’t let go of? _“I’m a marine.”_ Because she’s not. Not anymore. Nile Freeman was killed in action. Nile Freeman is dead. _If I’m a ghost, why does this hurt so fucking much?_

Her last thought before she succumbs to sleep is, _at least there won’t be the dreams anymore._

_A knife slices at her throat. She feels the blood, so much blood on her hands and dripping into her lungs. The world spins and fades. The face before her flashes between a man in a turban and a woman in red. There is something around her chest and her stomach. The straps on a field litter or the grapple of hand to hand combat. She can’t move, can’t breath. She tries to scream and blood curdles in her mouth._

And she heaves awake.

An arm falls from around her middle, Quỳnh’s -- because of course the woman is a sleep snuggler -- and Nile pushes herself to her feet. As she stumbles to the door, she trips and falls over something solid but also soft. A body. Panic blinds her for a minute before realizing it’s Booker, asleep on the bedroom floor, handgun tucked, like in Goussainville, down the front of his pants. The fucking bastard. When she slips out of the bedroom and closes the door behind her, she realizes that her breathing is still hard and fast and she feels like she’s run several miles in full combat gear and a heavy pack.

 _I need tea_ runs through her head and then _fuck fuck fuck, what have I gotten into._

\---

“We need to talk,” Nile announces when he finally emerges from his bedroom the next morning. His head aches and his eyes are scratchy and he feels in desperate need of his daily _caffè corretto_. Nile’s fully dressed, probably has been for hours. There’s a notebook open in front of her, pages covered in purple pen. And just like when she barked, “no man left behind” at him in Merrick’s lab, he can’t seem to help but follow her orders.

“Sure,” he says, scooping grounds into his coffee maker, leaning against the counter. Quỳnh, he sees, is reclined on his couch twirling something colorful in her fingers. “Is that a…?”

“Rubik’s cube. Yeah. She likes colors. And puzzles. Apparently.” Nile pauses, shrugs, then looks back at him, her expression hardening. “We need a plan.” She gestures to the chair across from her. He obliges. He’s close enough to read some of the writing in her notebook, even if it’s upside down. At the top of the page is written “Topics for 21st Century Survival” in careful print. She catches him looking and turns the notebook to face him. He surveys what she’s written.

_History --_  
_Political, major movements (democracy, socialism, facism, communism)_  
_Colonialism and Imperialism_  
_Wars and conflicts_  
_Personal? A J & N, us_

_Geography -- what places are called now -- most important ones?_

_Technology --_  
_The steam engine? Industrial Revolution (does this belong in History?)_  
_Electricity, practical (theoretical too? Or just electrocute her once and call it good enough?)_  
_Modern appliances (first: stove, electric lights, modern bathrooms, phones. Then?)_  
_Transportation (how did she get HERE? Cars, trains, planes)_  
_Money (probs less important)_  
_Computers and the internet (dear lord)_

_Food?_

_Guard Stuff --_  
_Guns_  
_Modern military equipment and tactics_  
_Security systems and protocols_

_Popular Culture --_

He’s not quite done reading -- she’s been thorough, he’ll give her that -- when she says, “Look…” He does, and she inhales, preparing for what she wants to say next. She tilts her head to the side and even he can hear the popping of the tension in the vertebrae there. “I can’t-- I’m _not_ \-- doing this by myself.”

“Trust me, Nile. I’m with you.”

Her expression hardens. “Forgive me if I don’t believe the pretty promises of the man who sold out his family, of the man who did squat yesterday expect mope and drink when I clearly needed help, and then spent the night on the floor out of some misguided act of patriarchal BS when I said I could handle myself.” Her words, the honesty of them, lash across him, as if leaving festering welts behind. He feels himself smothered under her gaze. He wants to hunch into the chair, to crawl under the table, to fall into the oblivion of whiskey and daytime television.

Instead, the coffee maker dings and Booker shoots out of his chair to grab his mug and slip some brandy into it. He feels Niles eyes follow him, scrutinize him, as he does so. He realizes he has two choices: fight or flee. Trying to escape is, he supposes, in a roundabout way, what got him into this mess of Merrick and exile in the first place. When he sits back down, he has made his decision. He takes a sip, notes the familiar burn of the brandy, and says, “So let me prove it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my friends once referred to the French retailer Monoprix as "Target but better." I cannot independently confirm nor deny this claim, but I do have a lovely Monoprix scarf from the last time that friend was in France.


	5. Picking Locks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes for this chapter:  
> \- Quynh confronts her fear of water, with the help of both Booker and Nile, who prioritize her comfort and her expression of her own needs and limits, resulting in a successful team-effort bath.  
> \- Nile begins to confront and accept that US's actions abroad might be more imperialist than democratic. Like most humans, she has a much easier time accepting this in the historical context of the Vietnam War, than in her own role as a US Marine in Afghanistan.
> 
> Thanks to all of you who have been leaving comments -- they really are so encouraging and kind and lovely!
> 
> Shout out to the crew at Disaster Immortals for the encouragement and community, and especially to haltiamieli for their quick sanity/comprehension check on the bit about the Vietnam War.

“Do you think Quỳnh is starting to, uh, smell?”

Booker stands at her shoulder as she pokes at the onions sauteing in the pan on the stove.

Quỳnh was still on the sofa flipping through a fat art history textbook Booker had pulled nonchalantly from his bookshelves. “She likes colors,” he’d said earlier that afternoon, “maybe we can see if she likes Rothko or Pollack better?” It was a place to start and Booker had volunteered and Nile hadn’t been about to stop him. So as Booker and Quỳnh had sat shoulder to shoulder murmuring together about art for hours, Nile had taken stock of the measly supplies in Booker’s pantry and then paid through her teeth to get groceries rush delivered. _No replay of yesterday needed, thank you very much._

She shrugs as Booker pours tortilla chips into a bowl and snaps open the lid on the jar of spinach and avocado dip. The answer to his question is an emphatic _yes_ but trying to get Quỳnh anywhere near water scares the shit out of her. “I dunno, maybe?”

Nile looks intently at her onions as she feels his eyes on the back of her neck. He doesn’t say anything just looks and waits and _God why is he so infuriating_ and so she says, “Yes, alright? She needs a bath. Or a shower. Or something. But fuck if I know how to make that happen without…” she runs a finger across the front of her throat.

He huffs a laugh and raises his eyebrows in what she thinks is agreement and says, “I have an idea.” She stares after him as he returns to the couch with his snacks.

A few minutes later, she hears him say, “Tell me about the baths of Constantinople.” _That’s his opening? Dear Lord._ “I’ve seen the buildings of course, but never in the use they were built for.”

Quỳnh chuckles and says, “Ah you wish to know what went on in the _women’s_ baths.” Quỳnh twists around to address Nile. “Men,” she says with a wink. Nile smiles -- _the woman’s not wrong_ \-- and Quỳnh turns back to Booker. “Before Islam turned it into a much more solemn affair, bathing was such glorious fun. You’d think there’d be nowhere to hide secrets inside the bath house, but the women in the washing pools could be such vicious gossips.” She hummed to herself, drifting into the memory. “The merchant’s wives especially. You could gather all kinds of knowledge about the important men of the city just by relaxing in the baths and waiting.”

“After dinner,” Booker edges slowly into her reminiscence, “Nile and I can help you feel like that again.”

Quỳnh’s body goes rigid and Booker shoots Nile a panicked look. Nile rushes around the couch, kneeling before Quỳnh and taking her hand. “We don’t have to,” she says quickly, “but Booker -- and I -- thought it would be something nice, a treat.”

Quỳnh’s eyes are squeezed shut and her breathing has gone shallow. She shakes her head back and forth.

Booker pulls her face between both his hands. “Hey,” he says, loud and demanding. Her eyes flutter open. “No water goes near your head. I promise.” Nile can tell she still looks hesitant, like she doesn’t trust him, which _fair_. He continues, “You can kill me -- kill both of us -- as many times as you want, if we break that promise, okay?”

Quỳnh nods and the tension eases out of her body. Nile is _extremely_ displeased that Booker bartered with her life, even immortal as they are, without asking her first, but she does have to admit that the ploy worked. And sharing a bed with someone who no longer smells heavily of sweat and salt? Well, that will be nice development.

“It’ll be a party,” Nile says, rising and returning to the stove. She catches Quỳnh’s face processing her slang, but she doesn’t feel bad leaving that explanation to Booker, too.

\---

Hours later, Nile has put Booker in charge of running the bath. She presses a slim bottle into his hands before walking back out of his bathroom, to prepare herself and Quỳnh. Lavender Oil. He sprinkles a few drops into the water as it’s rushing into the tub and soon the whole space smells like the summers he spent as a young man working the harvest north of Marseille.

He remembers the summer of his courtship with Mélanie, meeting her at the side of the road. The farmer’s wagon she’d rode from town had barely slowed to let her off and he caught her as she stumbled on the hem of her skirt and the dust swirled around them. Lavender stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see and he pressed a kiss to her cheek in greeting. She looked at him, as fierce and clever as ever, and murmured his name and then pulled him down for a kiss, a real one, damn propriety and whichever of Sébastien’s fellow field hands might see. _Was that the moment he knew he wanted to marry her?_

A knock on the door jolts him out of his reverie and he quickly shuts off the water running into the tub.

The door opens and there stands Nile, in a hot pink sports bra and running shorts, and _mon dieu_ , he feels massively over-dressed in a t-shirt and trousers. She leads Quỳnh, similarly attired, by the hand into the small space.

He sees Quỳnh inhale and and reads the apprehension strung through her muscles. “Smells nice,” she croaks and exhales, the line of her shoulders sinking ever so slightly.

Nile squeezes Quỳnh’s hand in reassurance. “Take Booker’s hand,” she directs softly. “I’m going to get in and then you’ll join me, yeah?”

Quỳnh’s hand shoots out and grabs his, tight and painfully. Quỳnh rocks up onto the balls of her feet, sinks back into her heels, like she’s about to break into a flat out sprint. Maybe she is. “It’s okay,” he says, as soothing as he can, “we’re here.” She looks at him, her eyes wide and wild for a moment before she ducks her head and leans her forehead against his chest.

“You promised,” she says, hard and flat.

“I did.”

His eyes flick to where Nile is sitting on the edge of the tub, her feet in the water. He nods and she sinks down into the bath. As she hits the warm water, her mouth opens and eyes flutter closed. Something twists through Booker’s gut. On her face is an unbidden moment of vulnerability and sensual pleasure, intimate as hell. Booker’s brain, which was remembering his Mélanie just moments ago, now hints, _you want to be what brings that expression to her face._

 _What? Fuck. Focus._ When he snaps back to reality in the next instant, he feels two expectant pairs of eyes on him. “Do you think you can sit on the edge now?” he says to Quỳnh. She nods and does. Without their direction, she swings one foot over into the water and then the other. She lets out a hiss.

“Everything okay?” Nile asks gently, looking up at her. Quỳnh’s eyes are tightly closed, her hand still squeezed fiercely in Booker’s, but she nods again. “I can hand you a cloth to wash with,” Nile offers, and this time Quỳnh shakes her head.

Her eyes open. She glances at her hand in Booker’s and up at his face and then back to Nile. “No,” she says. “All the way.” He has an instant of marveling at her courage, before she is lowering herself into the water. Nile has a hand on her back guiding her down.

Booker once again feels ancillary and overdressed, so he takes this moment to pull his t-shirt over his head and toss it aside. Then he maneuvers himself down onto the tiled floor.

“Booker,” comes Quỳnh’s voice, undercut with anxiety.

“Still here,” he says and extends his hand back towards her. Her palm is wet from the bathwater, but nevertheless she attaches her hand to his once again. She sits in between Nile’s legs, resting against her, her head tipped back on Nile’s shoulder.

“This is fine,” Quỳnh says softly.

“Yeah?” from Nile.

“Yes.”

Booker’s not sure how long they sit like that. His lower back is starting to cramp from the position, but he doesn’t dare move. Quỳnh washes slowly, deliberately, rubbing the terrycloth of the washcloth back and forth over her skin multiple times, sighing. Nile places a hand on the back of Quỳnh’s head and says, “Hair next time, yeah?”

Quỳnh glances over her shoulder to look at Nile. “Yes. I would like that.”

“Deal.”

When they rise from the water, Booker holds up towels for both of them. Nile begins drying off, but Quỳnh slings the towel over her shoulders. One of Quỳnh’s arms snakes around his back and the other around Nile’s. She pulls them both in close to her. “I can trust you,” she says with a squeeze before practically flouncing out of the room, still dripping.

He feels Nile's eyes linger on him -- _Is she? No. No way._ \-- and he says, “I’m on clean-up. You go.” She nods and ducks out after Quỳnh.

Booker sinks to his knees and pulls the plug from the tub. As the cloudy water whirls down the drain, Booker’s head spins similarly. _Get a grip, Sébastien._

\---

Over the next weeks, the weather moves from the tepid warmth of spring to the sunny heat of summer and the three of them relax into a routine. Mornings are for exercise: runs in the park, trips to the shooting range, kickboxing classes, katas and sparing.

Nile thrives on the daily endorphins, on starting her day with stretch and burn in her muscles, even if her flatmates often need more rousing in the morning than she does. Quỳnh has started sleeping in her leggings and tank tops and bemoans, loudly, that she has perfectly good, comfortable pajamas that are going to waste because of Nile’s schedule, but apparently the extra five minutes of sleep in the mornings are worth it.

And if Booker seems to be finding excuses to take off his shirt? Now that he’s not covered in his own entrails, Nile’s not above admitting that his broad shoulders and trim hips are nice, for a white boy. So yeah, other than that first time after the bath when she’s sure he caught her looking, she appreciates. But subtly. The aesthetics of him.

Their afternoons are for learning: Nile takes geography and the practical technology lessons, Booker takes history.

Quỳnh does, in fact, get electrocuted, though Nile swears it wasn’t intentional, regardless of whether Booker chooses to believe otherwise. Quỳnh’s wonder at the automatic sliding doors transfers to everything else Nile shows her: the stove that’s always ready to burst with fire, the telephone that lets you speak to people on the other side of the world, the clocks, everywhere, that tell you what time it is. Sometimes as the sun starts to set, Nile will find Quỳnh hunched over her reading or squinting at her Rubik's Cube, having forgotten that she doesn’t need to light a fire or a candle and can just flick on a switch. After her electrocution experience (wet hands and plugging in the coffee maker), Quỳnh methodically goes around turning off all of the things that can be turned off anytime they are all leaving the apartment. She is at once ingrained in her ways from her thousands of years of living and full of joy and glee at the conveniences of 21st century life.

On alternate days, Quỳnh and Booker gather around the kitchen table and talk history, the story of the world from the time Quỳnh was at the bottom of the ocean. Booker pins up a long piece of butcher’s paper (acquired, indeed, from the neighborhood butcher) along the bookshelves across from the couch. Booker has decided to approach his task thematically rather than chronologically: they do democracy first, then colonialism, jumping through time and space. Slowly the timeline gets filled in with dates and events of the last 500 years.

Nile likes being around for Booker’s lessons: the man’s an excellent storyteller, she’ll grant him that. But whenever Booker’s lessons focus on the United States, Nile has to shut herself away in the bedroom. He’s just… so cynical? Nile grew up on the South Side; she is intimately aware that the US isn’t perfect, especially if you’re poor and brown or black. But damn, the way he casually labels her country as imperialist, as evil almost, makes her mad. She hauls him into the bedroom one evening after such a lesson and confronts him about it.

“What was your mission in Afghanistan?” he asks.

It seems like a non-sequitur, but even after all this time, the response is ingrained in Nile’s brain. “To track and dismantle militants.”

“And why was that your mission?”

“To enhance and protect the security of the United States.”

He pauses, and then: “And what is the definition of imperialism I had Quỳnh memorize? I know you’ve been helping with her flashcards.”

Another non-sequitur, but Nile knows the answer to this one, too. “Imperialism,” she recites, “is a policy of extending the rule over other peoples and other countries, for political and economic access, power and control, primarily through military force.”

Booker nods, sighs. He runs his fingers through his hair from forehead to neck, as if he’s reluctant to say whatever’s on his mind. “Nile,” he says finally, “were those men with their improvised explosive devices really a threat to the best funded and best equipped military the world has ever seen? Or was there a different reason, a _real_ reason you were deployed to a separate, sovereign nation?”

It takes Nile a minute to process the inference made by his question, but then anger absolutely thunders through her. She lunges towards him to hit, punch, kick, hurt. _Take it back. Take it back._ He side steps, dodges her. Their eyes lock over the space between them. She’s waiting for him to make a move. He’s waiting for her next attack. He fishes the flask from his back pocket and takes a long pull, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I’m going out for the evening,” he breaks the silence, sliding the flask away. “But trust me when I say I know how it feels to be betrayed by the people and principles you believed in.”

And with that, he turns on his heel and leaves.

Nile slumps onto the bed. _How dare he._ She punches the pillow. Picks it up and throws it against the wall. Grinds her molars together to keep from screaming.

Quỳnh finds her some time later rocking back and forth, fingernails digging into palms. Nile feels the other woman’s arms wrap around her from the back. She bursts into tears, the sobs shaking her chest and lungs.

They both know Quỳnh doesn’t understand, not really, but nevertheless Quỳnh holds her through it, rubbing her back and whispering soothing words in her ear, sometimes in English and sometimes in languages Nile doesn’t even recognize.

She knows she’ll have to think about what Booker’s suggested, what it means for who she is and her place in the world and in this family. But right now, she cries until the tears have all dried up, in the arms of her older sister.

\---

A couple of weeks later, Nile still hasn't sorted through what it meant to be a US Marine in Afghanistan -- she's decided needs to talk to Nicky and Joe for help with even where to start on _that_ question -- but the more she really listens to what Booker is telling Quynh, the more she sees the big picture. And, as much as it pains her to admit it, he's almost certainly right. So, Nile once again makes herself comfortable on the couch, while Booker and Quỳnh are working through their history lesson for the day. She has a book open on her lap but the conversation behind her is much more entertaining and she has hardly consumed two words.

“So the Americans, the ones who started modern democracy, are actually the imperialists.”

“Yes.”

“And the communists are not actually communists, but dictators masquerading as communists.”

“Yes.”

“And the US wants to fight the Russian and Chinese Not-Communists.”

“Yes.”

“But instead of actually fighting the Russians or the Chinese, they decide to fight the Vietnamese.”

“Yes.”

“Who are also Not-Communists.”

“Well, nominally.”

“Booker, why did you make me memorize all these definitions to words that don’t mean in reality what they mean on paper?”

“Precisely because the world is fucked up and nothing is what it says it is.”

They both groan and Nile barely restrains letting out a snort of her own amusement.

“So if the Vietnamese are only nominally Not-Communist, what _are_ they?” Nile hears Quỳnh’s light footsteps move back and forth behind her, pacing.

“Umm, nationalist? But mostly just wanting to be left alone.”

“No shit.” This is an expression Quỳnh has picked up from Nile and it tickles Nile every single time Quỳnh uses it.

“So this Vietnam War is already an ideological mess before it even really begins,” Quỳnh continues. “What happens next?”

“Honestly?” Nile doesn’t look at Booker but she can feel him shaking his head. “The Viet Cong -- they’re a paramilitary group -- kill many, many US soldiers because who wouldn’t fight back against an invading army? And the US military kills many, many Vietnamese civilians because, with no clear battle lines, they’re told any of them might be ‘the enemy.’ The whole thing is probably the deadliest clusterfuck in all of history.”

“I’m sure Nicolo and Yusuf had feelings.”

“So many angry rants.”

Quỳnh drops back into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Nile turns and sees Quỳnh’s body assume the same defeated slump of the first day they met, the one where Quỳnh admitted she wasn’t ready to return to her oldest and closest friend. “I hate this,” she says. “They are still my people, and I can’t stand that this happened to them.”

“The world is a cruel place.” Booker unstoppers the whiskey bottle and takes a long pull from it. He offers it to Quỳnh. She too lets the alcohol pour down her throat for longer than Nile knows she herself could stand.

“Do you ever wish you could hurt the people who make the world like this?” Quỳnh says after a minute.

“All the fucking time.”

“Or steal stuff from rich assholes. That always felt nice.”

Nile thinks that when they get to the popular culture section of their curriculum, _Leverage_ absolutely deserves a place of honor. And then she catches the smile widening across Booker’s face.

“I have an idea,” he says. “No more history for today.” He stands and rummages in one of the drawers in his kitchen, the one that Nile’s mother would refer to as the "junk drawer." He holds up a padlock in one hand and a cardboard sheaf of bobby pins in the other. “Quỳnh,” he says, his smile transforming into a self-satisfied smirk, “let me teach you how to pick a lock.”

They sit shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen table for hours as Booker demonstrates and Quỳnh slowly learns how to hold her hands and sense the tumblers and flex her fingers just so. The smile on Quỳnh’s face when she succeeds for the first time is blinding and Nile feels exhilarated just from watching her figure it out. Eventually Nile slips from the couch to the chair across the table from them and becomes the official timer as Quỳnh tries to bring the time it takes her to pick the lock down from minutes to seconds. At one point, she catches Booker’s eye as Quỳnh is quickly but methodically working and she sees the pride and the contentment in the way the skin creases at the corners of his eyes and she knows he feels the same warmth and comfort she does, sitting here with them.

 _This is nice_ , she thinks, as she basks in his smile and their shared happiness.

\---

In the years to come, when Booker thinks about the summer he spent with Nile and Quỳnh, he will recall sitting around the kitchen table with them. He will recall Quỳnh’s fingers working away at an increasing array of padlocks, her pushing herself to be better and nimbler and faster. Most of all, he will recall the looks he shared with Nile, happy and carefree and full of promise soon to be unlocked.


	6. First Blush

This is not her fault, Quỳnh thinks, as Nile and Booker both flutter and squawk around the laptop on the kitchen table.

Nile had showed her the intertubes -- no _internet_ , that’s what it was called -- and explained that it was a repository of information, a source of entertainment, and a method of communication. And yeah, Wikipedia was great -- Quỳnh’s not totally sure why Booker didn’t just sit her down in front of it weeks ago and let her do her own learning about history -- but it had been 500 fucking years since the last time she’d pleasured herself and she was more than a little curious if “entertainment” included, well…

Booker, apparently, hadn’t appreciated opening his laptop to the sounds and images of a man tied down to the bed, with a woman riding his cock while hungrily kissing a second woman. He had, in fact, been so surprised, that he had looked over his shoulder at Nile, and in doing so he had spilled coffee all over himself and the computer. The computer had fizzled and then gone abruptly dark before being slammed shut.

But again, none of this is her fault. Quỳnh did not spill the coffee. And Nile had apparently not taught her about “closing the damn windows” (Booker’s words), so how was she supposed to know that whatever was open on the screen just didn’t go away on its own?

Booker and Nile are still sniping at each other, but Quỳnh had noted the flush of Booker’s cheeks and the widening of Nile’s eyes when he’d opened the computer, the way he’d glanced over his shoulder at her before slamming the laptop closed again, the way they’d immediately started bickering, how their eyes had barely left each other ever since.

Quỳnh leans back and surveys the information she’s learned this morning:  
1\. Close the damn windows on the computer, especially after watching sex  
2\. Booker and Nile saw sex and then immediately looked at each other  
3\. Booker and Nile saw sex and then each other and then they started fighting about inconsequential things

That last bit niggles at her brain. It feels... familiar. Ah yes, in their earliest days traveling with Yusuf and Nicolo, there had been quite a bit of fighting over inconsequential things.

Oh ho. Quỳnh rubs her palms together. This is going to be _fun_.

\---

It begins with the Eiffel Tower, as it so often does in Paris.

“I’ve been here for months,” Quỳnh says to him as they’re carrying the groceries home from the store. “And all I’ve seen of Paris is your lousy apartment and the inside of some local stores.”

“For good reason.” He and Nile had agreed that money and transit and modern security systems would be the last things they would teach Quỳnh, for fear of creating a fiend too soon.

Quỳnh harumphs, and re-settles the canvas bag over her shoulder. It appears to be the end of the conversation.

When they arrive home, Quỳnh picks the lock on the door to his flat, in three seconds less than her previous attempt.

“ _Très bien, ma choupette_.” She shoots him a grin over her shoulder as the door swings open before her and he can’t help but smile, too. Of all the things he’s taught Quỳhn over the last two months, this is the most visible, most practiced, and maybe the thing he’s most proud of.

Then, Quỳnh scoops up her bag, marches into the flat and calls out: “Nile! Booker won’t let me go see the Eiffel Tower.”

Even though Booker is holding the bag with the eggs, he considers, for a moment, dropping everything in his arms and fleeing to avoid whatever this conversation is about to be. He likes Quỳnh, really he does, in spite of their very painful beginning. But he has learned that she delights in chaos, in bringing a bow and arrow to a melee and wreaking what unsuspecting havoc she can.

Instead of fleeing, he sinks down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and mutters, weakly, “That’s not what I said.”

Nile comes in and squeezes his shoulder on her way to unloading the groceries into the fridge. “I’m sure,” she says, with mirth dancing in her eyes.

“You still don’t let me pay for things,” Quỳnh insists, sinking into the chair across from him, “even though it doesn’t take any counting and all you do is swipe a plastic card.”

Booker scrubs a hand down his face. _Like hell am I giving Quỳnh access to a credit card._ “Again, there is a good reason for that.”

Nile snorts, in what he hopes is agreement. She stands and closes the fridge door, leans back against it.

“I mean,” she begins, “I’ve never been to the Eiffel Tower either.” She raises her eyebrows at him and _mon dieu_ these women might actually be the death of him.

And so, later that afternoon, Booker finds himself standing on the highest observation deck of the _tour Eiffel._ Quỳnh and Nile are chatting excitedly and Booker admires the view of this city. He has seen Paris grow and burn and roil and settle for hundreds of years and there is something about looking down up on it that feels akin to his experience: separate and removed from it yet hopelessly a part of it too. Quỳnh and Nile are chatting excitedly, their eyes full of wonder. Nile is pointing out the landmarks of the city she’s only seen in pictures with an enthusiasm that makes his heart swell.

He steps up to the railing next to Nile and the breeze blows lightly against their faces.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she replies, looking up at him with an incandescent smile.

\---

All other lessons are put on hold as Nile and Booker double down on their “Navigating the 21st Century” curriculum. Quỳnh wakes up each morning wondering what landmark she’ll get to visit that day and goes to bed each night with her feet sore from traipsing around the city and her mind buzzing with new lessons and inventions and information.

She learns about metal machine death horses (“cars”) and underground capsule tubes (“the Métro”). She learns about real money (“Euro coins”), stupid money (“paper Euros” or “bills”), and plastic money (“credit cards”). She learns how to cross a street properly and enter the Métro through the turnstiles. Nile even starts teaching her about “cell phones,” the magic boxes all humans these days seem so attached to.

Along the way they visit the _Arc de Triomphe_ and the cathedral _Notre-dame du Paris_. Quỳnh sees Nile’s eyes glow with wonder getting to take in these famous places for herself, something she never expected would happen in her mortal life. She sees the way Nile glances at Booker when he tells a particularly personal story. She sees the way Booker looks at Nile with adoration in his eyes as Nile appreciates his adopted city.

And for the first time in more years that she can really fathom, Quỳnh feels what it means to be happy and loved. She recognizes that this means she’s almost ready to see to Andromache again, to see her and be able to feel all of the emotions that will come with their reunion. But she has a couple more things to accomplish here first.

\---

The day after they visit the Catacombs, Quỳnh sits down to breakfast and says “I want to visit all the cemeteries in Paris.” Quỳnh says this in the same mundane tone of voice in which Nile’s mother might’ve said “I’m going grocery shopping later today,” or “I’m picking up an extra shift this weekend.”

Booker looks at Quỳnh, mug of coffee paused halfway to his mouth, blinks several times, opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. He hasn’t yet become inured to Quỳnh’s brand of crazy and, well, Nile finds it kind of adorable. _Adorable? Jeez Freeman, get your head together._

“The cemeteries here are practically tourist destinations, right?,” Nile adds. Somehow, with just a look, convincing Booker that this is a good idea has become their prime joint objective.

“I haven’t had a real, proper history lesson lately,” Quỳnh adds. “Think of all the stories you’ll get to tell, Booker: Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Degas, Chopin. You’re an artist. Surely you met some of them.”

Nile can see the eager look on Quỳnh’s face. She also notes the way Booker’s shoulders are curving forward, the way he is inspecting the liquid in his mug intently.

“I’m not an artist,” he says, which is a deflection if Nile’s ever heard one. It’s been about a week since _the laptop incident_ but she is not in the mood to deal with his bullshit today.

“Booker,” she barks, the ex-Corporal coming out. “Bedroom. Now.”

He’s startled but he rises and shuffles toward the other room. She follows after him and closes the door.

“Talk to me.”

He shrugs, so very Gallic of him, shifts his weight from foot to foot. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. So we can either turn this into a game of 20 Questions, or you can start talking.”

“20 Questions?”

“Don’t.”

He snorts and takes a pull from his flask. “Phillipe,” he says, slowly, his voice full of the same gravel as that night in the abandoned mine. “My second eldest.”

Nile is pretty sure she knows where this is going. He takes another sip from his flask and sinks onto the bed.

“I told him about the Revolution, how it had ended in terror and empire. How it had made the life of the poor no better than before, perhaps even worse. I told him all the dreams a father has for his sons: that he would find a practical woman to love and a vocation that will make him money enough to live, that his vocation would be an honest one, that his life would be free of hardship.”

Booker pauses, shakes his head at the memory. “And he, always the idealist, scoffed and said ‘What happened to the man who fought at the Tuileries?’ and I said, I _told_ him ‘That man died in the snows of Russia, conscripted to fight a war he didn’t believe in for a country he was ashamed of.’ And then he laughed, Nile, he _laughed_ and patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘This time I’ll make sure the fight for _liberté_ doesn’t fail.’ He left the next morning, to fight the Bourbon Restoration in Paris, to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

She can hear the sarcasm in his voice at that last bit, can hear the scoff of self-hatred punctuating it.

Booker’s head is ducked, his shoulders hunched, like the memories have punched him in the gut. The fingers of his hands dig into his knees. Nile sits down next to him on the bed and lays a hand over his.

“He’s buried here in Paris,” she says.

It wasn’t a question, but he nods.

“So we skip that one. Or we don’t. Whatever you want, Book.” He releases a breath and Nile feels it brush against the back of her hand. “But I, for one, am excited to learn more about your exploits with famous Parisians of old.”

“There aren’t really any personal exploits,” he huffs. Nile’s pretty sure his annoyance is a cover for all the things still unspoken about his loss.

“Please tell me that Degas was an absolute perv or something equally wild.”

He shrugs. “Seurat was an ass. Sondheim got that right at least, even if the rest of that musical is trash.”

Nile knows her mouth is hanging open, catching flies, as her mother would say, but but but…

Booker can clearly tell she’s gaping at him. “What?” He shrugs again. “Joe went through a musicals phase about 40 years ago.”

\---

As they leave the _Cimetière du Père-Lachaise_ , Quỳnh is still fuming at the mother fucking English bastards who ruin everything. Oscar Wilde sounds like exactly the sort of person she would have delighted to meet at a nobleman’s feast: witty and funny and clear eyed about the foibles of the people around them. And the English took a national treasure and imprisoned and exiled him for a dumb fucking asinine reason.

So, Quỳnh trails along behind Booker and Nile. She’s not totally sure what transpired between them in the bedroom that morning. She’d pulled out her Rubik’s cube -- she is getting closer, she is almost certain -- and relaxed into the flow of twisting colored tiles. But Nile had been hovering near Booker all day and right now their shoulders are almost brushing.

Quỳnh wants a goddamn buttery French pastry to cure her anger and seizes an opportunity. She spots a storefront with “pâtisserie” across the window in shiny gold and grabs Nile by the hand. She is about to step off the curb when Nile squawks out “Quỳnh,” and Quỳnh remembers the lesson from several days prior: stop and look both ways before crossing the street. There was something about “crosswalks” and “jaywalking” but the pâtisserie is right there on the other side of the street and Quỳnh wants a croissant -- no, pain au chocolat -- as soon as possible. So Quỳnh stops, looks both ways, but then drags Nile across the street. No encounters with the metal machine death horses today, thank you very much.

As they’re standing next to each other in line -- just the two of them, Booker is still outside -- Quỳnh decides this is her moment.

“What’s the deal with Booker?”

Nile turns slowly to look at Quỳnh, her expression inscrutable. “What about him?”

“Do you like him?”

“He’s a _friend_. It would be a very uncomfortable eternity if I didn’t like him.”

Quỳnh hears the emphasis on “friend,” hears the very sound _logic_ of Nile’s statement. She doesn’t expect anything less of solid, steady Nile, but she’s also seen the way Nile looks at him after their work-outs, how she’s begun responding to his moods and emotions rather than chafing against them. And so Quỳnh decides to wreak just a little bit of havoc, for Nile’s ultimate good.

“He looks at you, you know.”

Nile rolls her eyes. “Of course he does. We live in the same tiny apartment.”

“He looks at you,” Quỳnh begins again, “like you hang the all the stars in the sky, just for him.”

She hears Nile huff as she steps up to the register and orders two croissants and a pain au chocolat in the perfect French she learned from the 200 years she spent in Booker’s head between drowning and drowning and drowning.

\---

They go to the _Cimetière de Montmartre_ the next day and Booker isn’t sure he’ll ever be ready but they’re doing it. Wandering around the lush green of _Père-Lachaise_ , telling stories about people he knew from history and those he’d only heard about, had been almost a respite from the daily life of Paris in the August heat. It had been just the three of them, friends, strolling, laughing, learning.

_Today will be no different._

And it isn’t, for the most part. Booker tells the story of the old gypsum quarry, how he knew people who were interred here in a mass grave during the early days of the Revolution. He talks about the painters and artists and intellectuals buried here now. Quỳnh asks all kinds of questions, her curiosity endless, and Nile stays right by his side. There’s something nice about her steadfast presence. _I can do this._

As they round a sloping curve in the cemetery’s path, he feels Nile’s hand against his arm, stopping him. He knows, without looking, what she has spotted. _Le Livre_ carved in limestone. He feels her eyes on his face and his throat is too tight to say anything at all, so he just shakes his head ever so slightly and Nile points at something on the other side of the path and pulls out a sheaf of papers and crayons from her backpack. She explains that grave rubbings were a thing she learned on a class trip in primary school, which he finds odd and _American_ , but he and Quỳnh both set to work while Nile supervises and coaches. They flit between graves, finding interesting words or motifs to transfer to their pages. At one point Nile crouches down next to him as his red crayon scrapes over the stone.

“Thank you,” he says, almost under his breath. His crayon continues to move back and forth.

She places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently. “You’re welcome.” A pause, not uncomfortable, just careful, reflective. “And if you ever want someone to come back with you, I’d be happy to.”

His crayon stills. He ducks his head. He can’t look at her for the ache that’s rising in his chest. It’s too much and not enough and he doesn’t know if the pain is loss or longing.

She squeezes his shoulder once more, gentle and firm, and then stands and goes off to join Quỳnh. But Booker stays there, practically suplicated against a stranger’s grave, unsure of everything.

\---

Nile decides they need a walk before hopping on the Métro back to Booker’s flat and Quỳnh gladly agrees. Being in a tube hurtling around underground seems to be an essential part of 21st century life, but she doesn’t have to like it. Walking, though, walking is as old as she is and, though she never thought something so mundane would become a comfort, here she is.

Quỳnh hasn’t been to this part of Paris yet and there are fascinating, bright things in so many of the shop windows. There are colorful clothes and images of lovely, mostly bare women and sleek electronics she still can’t even imagine the uses for. She darts from beautiful thing to beautiful thing and occasionally glances over her shoulder to make sure Nile and Booker are still following. They are.

And then something particular catches her eye. It’s a white plastic body wearing a set of complex leather straps. The background is pink and glittery with the words _le climax du plaisir_ scrawled in bright red script across it.

“Booker,” she calls, “I need your advice.”

When he and Nile near, she grabs him by the hand and drags him into the store, leaving a flustered Nile in their wake.

Inside is a treasure trove. Some of the objects she recognizes or can puzzle out. Phalluses have always been roughly that shape, though the range of colors and sizes and apparent features (ribs and nubs and curves) is remarkably new. There are straps and ropes and gags and that technology hasn’t changed very much. Even the floggers she recognizes, though wouldn’t have expected to find them here. On second thought, though, she can in fact imagine why she would find them here.

But there are all sorts of gizmos that are totally unfamiliar. Phalluses with funny antennae, squat little cones with wide flared bases, rubber nobs on long cylinders that look a little like the microphones in the singing shows Nile likes, but surely aren’t used for amplifying human voice.

So she has questions. And she has Booker.

She starts with the microphone-shaped objects. “What are these?”

Booker ducks his head and she can see the flush creep up under his beard. “Vibrators,” he says, his voice almost a croak, like a boy’s before its change.

“What do they do?” Quỳnh presses a button that says “try me!” and the thing buzzes to life in it’s plastic stand. Quỳnh jumps, surprised. She turns to Booker, her eyes wide with questions.

“You know…” he says.

Quỳnh doesn’t know.

“Women,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his beard, “well, I mean, I guess men too, maybe, but mostly women, they-- uh-- like the feeling against them-- their-- ah…”

“...their sex?”

He nods. Quỳnh claps her hands together.

“Are you sure you don’t want Nile to help with this?” he asks, his eyes glancing at the door.

“Nile’s 26. You’re older, formerly married, and hardly celibate in the years since.”

She sees him swallow thickly. “Fair enough.”

_Oh, this is going to be fun._

\---

When they return to the apartment, Quỳnh shoots off for the bedroom. Nile starts to follow after her, but Booker catches her by the wrist.

“You sure you want to do that?” he says.

Nile quirks an eyebrow at him in question.

“She is now rather well-stocked on bedroom -- accessories -- after our little pit stop this afternoon. And eager to try them out.”

Nile laughs. “I did wonder what was taking so long. Did she require your professional opinions?”

“Hardly professional, but opinions, yes.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, isn’t sure if he’s trying to _suggest_ something. And if he _is_ trying to suggest something, what that something is. Putting Booker and sex toys and his opinions in the same thought is causing sparks to jump low in her belly and she’s not sure what that means _at all_ so she settles for a “Mmmmm.”

They fall silent. He’s looking at her intently, like she is the only being in the universe and Quỳnh’s words from yesterday come to mind -- _like you hang all the stars in the sky, just for him_ \-- and the sparks start to turn into a simmer.

_Do I really like him like that? Or am I just horny as hell because -- between deployment and immortality -- I haven’t gotten laid in years._

But all of these are _not now_ thoughts and so Nile coughs a bit and says, “Movie night with the good shitty Chinese take-out?”

“Sure,” he says with a grin, and Nile definitely notices the way his hair flops against his forehead as he settles into the couch.

\---

Quỳnh wakes up the next morning feeling more satisfied than she can ever remember. Andromache’s passion always burned sharp and fast, too urgent for much creativity. For all the things that are weird and wild about life in this new world, sex toys are an unequivocal plus.

She noted absently that Nile hadn’t joined her in bed last night and her curiosity about that abates the moment Quỳnh opens the bedroom door.

Booker and Nile are fast asleep on the couch, still seated next to each other, fitting together like puzzle pieces. Her head is on his chest and arm is thrown over his torso. His cheek rests against the top of her head and his arm is snaked around her waist.

Quỳnh’s body was extremely pleased with her activities yesterday, but now her soul is pleased as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As 2020 comes to a close, I want to thank all of the fandom friends who read and comment and encourage me and all of the other creators out there.
> 
> I hadn't written any fanfiction since 2012 and these last couple of months have been an invigorating, joyful return.
> 
> Here's to more amazing Old Guard fanworks in 2021!


	7. As We Go On

Nile still wakes up first most days, rising early from years of conditioning without an alarm. Today is their day off from morning exercising and she knows the other two will sleep as long as possible. So she sneaks out of bed, tiptoes past Booker on the couch, and starts the coffee maker gurgling, when she notices the completed Rubik’s cube sitting on the kitchen table.

_Oh shit._

Sometimes she and Quỳnh lay their heads on their pillows intending to sleep, but end up gossiping and baring their souls for minutes or hours before actually passing out. Nile had a brother in her first life, but this seemingly inconsequential act of chatting before sleep, more than anything else, makes Nile feel like she has a sister in this one.

Over the last few weeks, since the cemetery visits, Quỳnh has mentioned feeling “ready,” mentioned that she was thinking about how she wanted to culminate her “studies” with Booker and Nile.

Nile had shown Quỳnh photos scrounged up on the internet from her high school graduation. None of her -- Copley was doing his job -- but of her friends and teachers. Quỳnh had been delighted by the silly hats, said she wanted one for her own “graduation.”

When Nile had pressed Quỳnh about when this “graduation” would happen, Quỳnh had just shrugged. “Let me finish my Rubik’s cube first. Then we’ll figure it out.”

Well, the Rubik’s cube is now solved.

And that means changes are coming that Nile is absolutely not ready to think about.

\---

Booker holds a piece of paper in his hands with Quỳnh’s looping script which says “Mission Objectives” across the top. Nile is reading over his shoulder and Quỳnh is grinning, self-satisfied.

“So this is really it?” Nile says.

Booker’s gut clenches as Quỳnh nods. Already, he sees the specters of them both in his flat, the timeline still tapped across his bookshelves, now covered in multicolored scribblings. The myriad hair products in his bathroom. The bag of cheap American chocolates Nile keeps in the freezer. The rice cooker Quỳnh insisted on during a return trip to the Monoprix. He wonders how long till the traces of them are gone.

“Wait wait wait.” That’s Nile again and her hand comes to rest on his shoulder as she points at something on the page, which he has been staring at, but not reading. “You want us to plan a heist of the Louvre?”

Booker’s head snaps up at that, to find Quỳnh’s cheeky grin. “Plan,” she says, “theoretically.” And then, “Stealing is fun.”

Nile sighs and her hand slips from contact with him. “I can’t believe my first trip to the Louvre is going to be on _reconnaissance_.” Booker hears Nile’s footsteps recede into the bedroom.

Booker still hasn’t read the rest of the objectives, still doesn’t know what to say. He feels Quỳnh’s attention shift to him and he can’t look at her but he also can’t focus on anything.

“You okay, Book?” she asks softly.

“You sure this is what you want?”

“It’s time.”

And with that, she rises and trails after Nile.

\---

  
On September 15th, Quỳnh calls Andy. Nile sits next to her on the bed, holding her hand as Quỳnh dials the number into her brand new smartphone.

Nile has taught Quỳnh the telephone etiquette her mother instilled into her. She’s taught Quỳnh how to order take-out and leave a voicemail message with the right information. They’ve even talked through this very conversation. But Quỳnh’s grip on her hand suggests what they both know: that no amount of preparation can ever ready someone for a conversation this important.

The phone against Quỳnh’s ear rings through once, twice, three times, and then…

“Hello?”

“Andromache?”

...

Nile shuts her eyes, straining to listen, but the voice on the other end of the phone is too muddled to make out and it isn’t her conversation anyways. (Quỳnh had offered to do this over speaker phone and Nile had politely declined. Now, her heart is beating out of her chest with nerves for two people she holds dear because she has absolutely no read on how it’s going).

“I want to see you.”

...

“No, Andromache, no, not that. I wouldn’t.”

…

“With you and Nile and Joe and Nicky and Booker. Wherever the world takes us.”

…

“Till the end.”

…

“I know. I wish it were different. I wish we could have another century together or more. But I know how I want to spend the time you have left.”

…

“Give me one more week, Andromache, and then Nile will bring me home.”

The phone falls from Quỳnh’s ear and she presses her face into Nile’s chest and sobs. Whether the tears are from happiness or despair, Nile cannot tell.

\---

The day before Quỳnh’s “graduation,” she banishes Booker and Nile from the flat.

Booker packs a backpack for himself and one for Nile. She takes it with a raised eyebrow, but no further questions.

Quỳnh closes the door behind them with a, “have fun and be safe, kids,” and they are off.

They take the funicular up the Montmartre hill and when the _Basilique du Sacré-Cœur_ comes into view, Nile’s thumbs are still hooked into the shoulder straps of her backpack, but her mouth drops open. Booker smiles privately and leans down so his next words are just for her, despite the throng of tourists around them.

“I know a spot,” he says.

Her head flicks toward his voice low in her ear. “Of course you do.” He thinks her tone might be fond, but immediately pushes that thought to the side. It is too hopeful. Has too much potential.

Still, he sees her return his smile and he clasps her by the elbow and says, “Follow me.” She does, without any hesitation. And that both makes his heart soar and scares the absolute shit out of him.

They snake around the base of the basilica, weaving through crowds of people speaking many different languages, till they arrive in a small park at it’s rear. This might be one of his favorite spots in modern Paris: a set of alcoves in the hillside, each lined with benches on three sides and shaded by wisteria vines growing on the trellis overhead. Booker settles onto one of the benches and throws his head back. He can just make out the blinding white of the basilica through the plants above, but he feels worlds away from the hot, sweaty masses taking advantage of Paris before the warm weather comes to an end.

Nile sits down next to him and inhales the sweet, earthy aroma of the flowers. He can almost feel the tension drain from her shoulders as she exhales.

“I brought fresh bread and Brie for lunch.”

“Very French.”

He shrugs. _It’s a classic for a reason._ “And I slipped the books from your nightstand into your bag,” he continues, suddenly a bit sheepish. “I thought we could sit here for a while and read maybe?”

“Perfect.”

Nile unzips her bag and pulls out the book that was at the top of the stack, _The Joy Luck Club_ by Amy Tan. She lays down on her stomach and props herself on her elbows and lays her book open before her. He stretches out his legs and cracks open his own novel, _Les Faux-monnayeurs_ , and allows himself to sink into the world arising from the page.

Sometime later, Nile, on her back now, lets out a strangled sound and closes her book with a sharp thud. Booker glances up. “Everything alright?”

“Just a little close to home.” Nile sits up and pulls her knees into her chest.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Nile shrugs as her fingers fidget with the cut pages of her book. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Never, Nile, not to me.”

“I don’t--”

“Maybe just tell me about the book? I’ve never read it.”

She sighs, contemplates for a moment, and then glances up at him. She is shy and uncertain and it’s a side of Nile he’s never seen. He wants to wrap her in his arms and hold her against his heart till she is back to being strong and confident and implacable. But neither of them has mentioned the morning they woke up on the couch in each other’s embrace. He can come up with multiple reasons she might not have brought it up -- because she’s embarrassed and never wants it to happen again or because she _does_ want it to happen again and doesn’t know how to say that or doesn’t know how it would be received -- but he has no read on what’s in her head when it comes to this, and to them. So, as much as he wants to pull her against him, he knows that he can’t, not yet, maybe not ever.

He scoots over next to her, though, so they are both looking out at the sloping terraces of the park and the city below them. Their shoulders and thighs do not quite touch. But something about this move, his presence, seems to cause Nile to start speaking.

“It’s about these four Chinese immigrant mothers in San Francisco and their Chinese-American daughters. And it’s good because it’s familiar, but not too familiar? Like my mom never played Mahjong or cooked dumplings from scratch. And she tried to turn me into a prodigy or anything, but that fierceness, that love that’s sometimes a little misguided but so intense? I get it.”

He nods, points to the title of his own book. “ _Les Faux-monnayeurs_ is translated as _The Counterfeiters_ in English.”

Her head tilts toward him, ever so slightly, not looking at him, but acknowledging, listening.

“And they’re counterfeiters,” he continues, “because they’re counterfeiting gold coins. But they’re also counterfeiters in their relationships, in a way, trying to figure out what is real and how much of themselves they need to give to another and how much they need to protect.”

He pauses, runs his thumb over the well worn cover. “And whenever I re-read it, I think I identify most with a different character. Sometimes I’m Bernard, who discovers he’s bastard-born and runs away in an identity crisis. Sometimes I’m the Comte, who corrupts and manipulates everyone around him. And sometimes I’m Oliver, who is desperately attracted to Edouard, a man so far out of his reach.” He sighs. “Reading _Les Faux-monnayeurs_ is sometimes a joy and sometimes it hurts like hell, but it always feels familiar, and that’s a kind of comfort, I guess.”

Nile hums next to him, and though from anyone else that noise would seem like a brush-off, he can tell she’s thinking about what he just said.

“One of the characters in the book, Lena: her mother has a baby who’s born with a birth defect and dies pretty much immediately. It fucks her mom up pretty badly, like Lena describes her as a ‘living ghost.’ And… and I know it’s not the same, but I miss her so much sometimes. And what if I was the one who did that to her, who sucked the life out of her with a death that’s not even really a death?”

“You did it for the right reasons, Nile. Sometimes that has to be enough.”

“You sound like Nicky,” she says and cracks him a watery smile.

“Hardly,” he replies, “I just read books, drink whiskey, and muddle through.”

She knocks her shoulder against his. “Give yourself a little more credit.”

They don’t say much after that, but they stay seated next to each other, surveying the slopes below them, turning over in their minds what the other has said.

\---

“We promise not to say anything till we get there,” says Nile.

“No hints?” Quỳnh looks at Booker.

“No hints,” he says.

And then, they’re off. Quỳnh winds through Paris’ narrow streets and wide boulevards with ease and confidence, and Nile feels a little bit like a duckling following her mother with absolute trust. Nile has some idea of how to get to the Louvre, but she’s luxuriating in the fact that she doesn’t have to pay attention, that someone else is in charge for today.

When they arrive, Booker grumbles something about how the famous glass pyramid is an “abomination to a historically significant architectural specimen” and she elbows him in the ribs. His eyes pull on a hurt look, but the side of his mouth is quivering just enough that Nile’s sure he’s playing her.

Just a few minutes later, Quỳnh stands in the que to pick up the pre-timed tickets she’d ordered online the day before. Quỳnh returns to them with the tickets fanned out before her, pride radiating. It’s infectious. Nile’s smile feels like it will burst out of her face.

Booker exclaims, “ _Ma choupette_!” and pulls Quỳnh into a hug. Quỳnh punches him on the arm, in response, grinning.

Once they enter the museum proper, though, they’re all business. Objective 1: select their target. They fan out over the different wings of the museum, in search of an object that fits the dossier Quỳnh compiled. Famous but not too famous. Placed relatively near an exterior wall or means of egress. Small and light enough to be easily carried.

When they rendezvous an hour later, Nile’s suggestion of a Greek amphora, despite its excellent placement to an egress option, gets shot down pretty quickly.

“Hard to tell if it’s on a pressure plate,” says Quỳnh.

“Harder to forge, when they’re more likely to jump right to carbon dating,” adds Booker.

Nile rolls her eyes. She still thinks hypothetically stealing a pot sounds much more fun than a painting, but Booker and Quỳnh have decided to approach this with the actual focus and dedication of an actual mission. Alright, she can up her game, too.

They decide on Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus as their target, largely because Booker scoffs at the apparent ease of replicating Quỳnh’s selection, an early 19th century seascape.

Somewhere along the line, Booker forging a replacement for their stolen piece of art has become an essential piece of the plan. Nile’s seen Booker passionate before -- she’ll never forget his lessons on colonialism and imperialism or his single minded focus of mind and body on a heavy bag at the gym -- but she realizes listening to him talk about the challenges and merits of forging artworks from different periods that she’s never seen him like this.

He isn’t just passionate, he’s an _expert_. And for a moment, she sees him as he might’ve been before the despair and betrayal, before the whiskey, before his family tragedies, even before he hanged by the neck for three never ending days in the Russian snow. For a moment, he is a man who is confident in his own self, his own worth.

It’s new, but it’s not a bad look. _Not at all._

Quỳnh takes Objective 2: the recon on the guard’s movements. That means Nile joins Booker on Objective 3: identifying security cameras and alarm systems and potential exits for the wing of the museum they’ve decided to target. Nile spends most of the next couple of hours trailing after Booker and taking notes as he talks, identifying this or that. She doesn’t mind one bit.

As they’re heading back to their rendezvous point, Booker leans towards her and says, “I’m sorry if we didn’t get to see as much of the museum as you would have liked.”

“This was fun.”

He smiles and glances away for just barely a moment. “I’ll come back with you sometime. If you want. To appreciate things properly.”

“That sounds nice.”

\---

Quỳnh brought Báhn mì for their picnic lunch in the Tuileries gardens, which Booker thinks is absolutely hilarious.

“Seems like no more fitting way to celebrate my graduation into 21st century life,” Quỳnh retorts, “than by preparing the only good thing to come out of French colonialism in my homeland.”

Booker laughs, and it reaches deeper inside of him than anything has in years. Nile’s laughing too and he thinks he sees something mischievous behind her expression.

“Speaking of graduation,” Nile says, unzipping her bag, “I thought you might like one of these…”

She hands Quỳnh a black rectangle. Quỳnh turns it over in her hands slowly and then the realization dawns across her face.

“Like in your photos!”

Nile nods. “It wouldn’t be a bona fide graduation without one.”

Quỳnh places the mortarboard on her head. Nile snaps several photos of Quỳnh and then corrals Booker into a selfie with them.

It is scorchingly hot for Paris in September, and Booker feels the sweat pricking along his neck and temples. Nevertheless, the sandwiches are excellent. The prosecco goes down easy. The sun shines bright on their faces. The grass is soft beneath them. The buzz of insects and conversations of other visitors sequesters them away from it all. Booker realizes that his entire world for the last few months is right here on this blanket. He realizes how much he has come to love these two headstrong, remarkable women, how comforting life with them has become. And, because this is becoming rather a theme in his very long life, here they are celebrating the end of whatever it is they have built together. He doesn’t want to -- he _can’t_ \-- think about that now, so pushes the future to the back of his mind and locks it away for the rest of the afternoon.

After their meal, Quỳnh and Nile sprawl out on their blanket, happy and sated and warm. Booker props himself up on an elbow next to them and they toss around further plans for their Louvre heist till they’ve got something they’re all happy with. He watches Nile run her fingers through Quỳnh’s hair. He bickers good naturedly with Quỳnh about whether it would be better for him to infiltrate the museum’s custodial or security staff. He feels like he’s practically glowing -- both with pride and the dawning sunburn -- when Nile snorts at both of them and points out, “there’s three of us, why not one on each?”

Their conversation moves on, dancing across the best moments of their time together, between topics new and well-trodden, light and joyful. Booker feels content and lazy in the sun, and he too lays down, an arm tucked behind his head. He feels Quỳnh’s head nuzzle against his shoulder.

“So do I pass?” she asks.

“Absolutely, _ma choupette_. Brilliantly.”

She is silent for a moment and then, says, so soft he can barely hear, “I’m going to miss you.”

The words clog up in his throat at the specter of her departure, but he reaches for her hand and squeezes tight. She squeezes back.

\---

As the clock on her nightstand flicks closer and closer to dawn, Nile finds herself staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

In a few hours, she and Quỳnh are leaving.

She misses her quiet mornings spent with Nicky before the others get up. She misses running errands with Joe, which always seem to turn into more of an adventure than really necessary. She misses Andy telling her to “fight dirty, damn it” when they’re sparing. She’s excited to bring Quỳnh back to them, to see them get to know and fall in love with Quỳnh all over again. She’s excited to be back with these people she now calls family.

But now, Booker is family too. Booker who is challenging and infuriating, sad and angry, funny and opinionated, kind and loving.

Her mind flits back waking up that morning in his arms. Something about it felt so natural, so right. Maybe it was a little bit physical: there is power and strength in each of his muscles, energy barely contained by skin. She could have tilted her head and kissed into the side of his neck that morning and she can feel the ghosts of his hands settling around her hips and the phantom scratch of his beard against her cheek. It could have so easily gone that way and she’s sure it would have felt damn good.

But she’d woken up in his arms and she had known immediately that she was safe and she was home. Her mind hadn’t immediately jumped to where the nearest weapon was stashed, or what potential threats were looming. That it hadn’t was probably dangerous as hell, but she had not cared that morning, and she still couldn’t find it in herself to think she should have done anything differently.

So she liked Booker. She liked their conversations and their jokes. She liked him even when he was being frustrating or when he was sad and wounded and trying not to show it. And, she wasn’t too proud to admit to herself that, she liked the feel of his shoulders beneath her palms and the weight of his arms around her.

At this point, they’re definitely family and almost certainly friends. And, even though she’s leaving in a couple of hours, she’s got time, loads and loads of it, to figure out anything more.

\---

All Booker can think about as the dark settles around him and the streetlight outside his window winks on is that tomorrow he will get to sleep in an actual bed for the first time in almost five months.

He hates the thought immediately.

Sleeping in his own bed means that he will be alone. Again. For 99 more years.

Quỳnh and Nile were never permanent. He knew that, they knew that, from the outset. But living with them, being with them has come to feel so natural, so easy. Even fun.

 _All good things end in pain and suffering._ It is a lesson he has learned over and over and over again in his immortal life. This is simply no different.

He drains the rest of his flask, glances at the bottle sitting on the kitchen table. _No, save that for tomorrow, Sébastien._

Sleep doesn’t come easily, so he pulls down his copy of _Finnegan’s Wake_ and lets himself get pulled into its insensible nonsense till his eyes are drifting shut.

\---

Growing up in Chicago, Nile learned that if you wanted to leave someone’s house at a certain time, you needed to announce you were leaving between 30 and 45 minutes before. There were leftovers to be packed up and conversations to be had as you were bundling into coats and “oh one last thing” as you were literally standing on the doorstep. Goodbyes were long, protracted affairs balancing the necessity of leaving with the desire to stay cocooned in warm hospitality of aunties and uncles and friends.

She knows today she will not be able to bear such a parting. With Booker, part of her wonders, were it not for Quỳnh, would she choose to leave at all. But she is with Quỳnh and Quỳnh is suddenly desperate to eliminate the miles between herself and her long lost love.

So, Nile brings all of their bags to the door. Pulls the snacks from the kitchen shelves. Gets everything ready so their goodbyes are short and final. She is almost ready to pull Quỳnh and Booker away from the art history book they’re flipping through together on the couch, when she pulls her identification tags over her head and leaves them in a pile on the kitchen table, right next to the half-consumed bottle of whiskey. Right where she knows he won’t overlook them.

And then they are gathering at the door and saying goodbye and Nile pulls him into a hug and, in an act of courage, just before he pulls away, she turns her head and presses a kiss against his cheek.

She takes a step back and says, “Till next time,” and squeezes his hand in reassurance. She doesn’t know when that will be, can’t promise him any time soon, but of seeing him again she is certain.

And then he is closing the door to the flat they’ve called home for so many months. Maybe Quỳnh senses her hesitation, maybe she is just eager to see Andy, but she takes Nile by the hand and says, “Shall we?”

Nile nods and the wheels -- of travel and of fate -- are set in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for bearing with the gratuitous book references in this chapter. 
> 
> Don't worry, there is much more to come for these two idiots!


	8. Cellular Division

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: Booker's alcoholism is on full display in this chapter, as an unhealthy coping mechanism for feeling alone.

Booker closes the door on Quỳnh and Nile. He slumps back against it. _What the fuck do I do now?_

When no answer comes readily to mind, he turns to the bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table. At least it’s something to do.

He pulls up short at the sight of Nile’s dog tags on his table. She never took them off. Not for boxing, not for bathing, not for anything. Yet here they were. It couldn’t be an accident.

He weighs the chain and the tags in his cupped palm, runs a thumb over the embossed letters of her name. It feels personal, almost intimate. _Fuck fuck fuck. I am not thinking about that._ He drops the dog tags and picks up the bottle and lets the whiskey pour down his throat till there is almost none left.

He is alone. Again. Abandoned. Like always.

He turns on the television, doesn’t bother watching it. The cheesy dialogue and laugh tracks grate on his ears but he doesn’t turn them off. He pours himself a bowl of cereal for lunch, and then another for dinner. He goes through bottle after bottle, first the whiskey, then the wine, then whatever else is at hand, the forgotten beers at the back of the fridge, the rum and brandy Nile had purchased for baking projects. Anything to keep the pain and the thoughts at bay.

Sometime in the afternoon, he vomits as a reaction to the alcohol. Booker vaguely wonders how many years it’s been since the last time his immortal fucking liver couldn’t metabolize the stuff fast enough: since Mélanie’s death? Jean-Pierre’s?

He curls up in his bed afterwards, but he hasn’t changed the sheets and the pillow still smells like shea butter and _Nile_. He nuzzles his face closer before his brain catches up to his body. _Stop being a fucking creep, Le Livre._

That night, he sleeps on the sofa. The next morning, he changes the sheets.

The morning after that he wakes alone in his big, comfortable bed. The sheets smell impersonal. The coffee maker isn’t gurgling and the shower isn’t running. Before the cavity of loss inside him can get any bigger, he stumbles out to the kitchen table and pulls Nile’s dog tags over his head.

He’s not sure, but maybe it helps?

\---

Booker doesn’t leave his apartment till three days after Nile and Quỳnh’s departure. In that time, Paris has been overtaken by autumn. Booker has to step back into his apartment and find his winter coat. The leaves are already turning and falling. The sky is solid grey, threatening to unleash frigid, steady rain, at any moment.

He heads to a bar in his neighborhood with _The Great Gatsby_ tucked into his coat. The place tries too hard to be French in its decor and too hard to be worldly in its cuisine. He orders a burger and Jack Daniels on the rocks and blocks out the rest of the world with Fitzgerald’s practically perfect prose. He does notice that everything about his evening is American, but decides not to examine that too closely.

The sky indeed desires to rain and, on his walk home, Booker gets pelted, the droplets falling fast and cold on his face. By the time he gets back to his flat, his clothing is soaked through and his copy of _Gatsby_ is ruined and he is shivering uncontrollably. All of it feels appropriate.

\---

The sun has just set when Quỳnh and Nile arrive at the safe-house in Dresden, a small home Nicky and Joe rebuilt after the firebombing. The neighborhood is still and quiet in the gathering darkness. Nile shivers. It’s colder than she expected.

Nile knocks on the door and they both get pulled into a whirlwind of hugs and questions and laughter. Nicky eventually ushers them all to the table where a spread of pita and veggies and hummus and falafel awaits. Joe pours the wine and sits back and says, “So tell us about your adventures.”

“We planned a heist,” Quỳnh begins with a casual shrug and Nile can’t help but laugh and share a smile with her sister. Eventually they backtrack to the beginning, share all of the important moments big and small. Nile doesn’t know if Quỳnh has always been this talented a storyteller, or if she picked this up from Booker, too. Regardless, the stories flow as easily as the wine as Andy and Joe and Nicky share their own adventures over the last few months. The four of them begin to reminisce on the earliest days of their acquaintance, before England and the iron maiden. Joe and Quỳnh together sound like an absolute menace and Nicky’s very patient expression suggests that he is preemptively bracing for this side of his husband to return forthwith.

They swap stories for hours and hours, till the sun has fully risen and a new day dawned. Eventually, Andy pulls Quỳnh away to her, their, bedroom. Nile hopes that they can offer each other forgiveness and comfort for all the years and pain that lie between them, but only they can decide what comes next.

She stays with Nicky and Joe a bit longer, till Joe yawns expansively, and Nicky says, “Go sleep, _hayati_. We’ll be around when you wake up.” And so just Nile and Nicky are left.

“You didn’t say much tonight,” he begins. “We have overwhelmed you.”

Nile nods, but then realizes how that might seem and blurts, “Not in a bad way. There are just so many years.”

“But you had a good time with Quỳnh and…?”

“Yeah. I really did.”

“I’m glad.”

Nile sits in the warm comfort of Nicky’s silence for a moment. She doesn’t know really where to start with this, but it’s been on her mind for months, and now seems as good a time as any.

“Quỳnh learned about colonialism and imperialism,” she begins. It’s a non sequitur, she knows, but Nicky gives her the space to continue with openness in his eyes. “And, not right now, but can we talk about it sometime? About fighting on the wrong side of a bad war and how you-- how I-- live with that?”

Nicky reaches out and cups the back of her head. “Of course, Nile. Whenever you are ready.”

She sags into his touch and he pulls her into a hug.

_It is good to be back._

\---

It takes Nile only a couple of more days to realize that she has just become the biggest 5th wheel in the history of history.

Quỳnh is spending most of her time with Andy, working out what they are to each other now that so much has happened and so much has changed. They spend many of their mornings out on walks around the city, a place which is an utter infant compared to them. When they return to the house, they murmur to each other over tea in the kitchen, or pretend to fight each other with sticks in the back yard, or curl up together in the overstuffed chair in the living room. Nile does not begrudge them this. Even with Andy’s mortality looming, their reunion seems to be going well.

Joe and Nicky have always gravitated towards each other. If Nicky is tending the garden -- the carrots and beets are almost ready for harvest -- Joe joins him by sketching on the back porch. If Joe is knitting and watching bad daytime television, Nicky is sitting on the floor and sharpening their blades. They’re not inseparable in the way Andy and Quynh have become. Joe invites Nile to go on runs with him and Nicky teaches Nile how to bake focaccia. She can see they’re making an effort and appreciates it, but they still orbit each other with a millennia of practice and familiarity.

Despite all their kindnesses, Nile hates being in this house. She hates going to sleep in a bedroom by herself. She hates sitting around and feeling purposeless. She hates waking up and making two cups of coffee only to realize that Nicky only drinks espresso when given the option and no one else will be up for hours.

She is constantly surrounded by people, people she loves with all her heart, and she is thankful for that. Truly she is. But she also feels more alone than she has since her very first days of immortality.

And she wonders, for the first time, if maybe immortals are supposed to come in pairs.

\---

_I wonder_ , Booker thinks to himself, _what it would take to actually forge that painting._

He’s drunk -- he can’t really remember the last time he was fully sober -- and this is almost certainly a terrible idea, but he writes out a list of all the supplies he’d need to forge the portrait and pass the authenticity testing. Oak sheafs as substrates. Dozens upon dozens of eggs and huge bottles of vinegar and oil for the tempera base. Sable brushes and ground pigments, some of them toxic.

He shakes his fist at Holbein and Erasmus both and then places all of the online orders.

_Between the liquor store deliveries and all of this, my credit card company must think I’m a freak._

He sets up an easel in his living room and gets to work. It’s slow going. He hasn’t painted anything in years, let alone with 15th century technology. His whole apartment smells of eggs, slightly soured. And of course there are like 18 different shades of fucking black in the portrait, and his color mixing skills are even rustier than his painting.

Still, it’s something to do. He wakes up and he paints, tiny cross hatches of instantly drying color. When he gets frustrated with the portrait, he picks up the nearest bottle. Sometimes he goes into the alley behind his flat and sets a lighter to the corner of an error riddled piece of dried oak. Sometimes he wanders around the neighborhood with his bottle in a paper bag and the cold biting into his hands and his heart. Sometimes he sits on the couch and streams something in English and really savors the burn of the alcohol down his throat. He rarely remembers what he ate for dinner the next morning when he gets up and starts the process over again.

\---

**October, One Year Later**

Booker once again closes the door on Nile and slumps back against it. _What the fuck do I do now?_

He feels unmoored, foundering. Four months is nothing to his hundreds of years, and yet every hour he spends with Nile feels more meaningful than however he has spent the rest of his immortal life. He pulls the chain with her dog tags from its resting place on the sideboard and places it over his head. The tags settle against his breast in a now familiar spot. The edges of the tags will crease his skin while he sleeps and the chain will leave divots in his neck. It is a small recompense compared to Nile herself, but he no longer feels like he will shatter apart, atom from atom.

Last time she left there was hope for her to return. This time, it’s a promise, but neither of them know when. The certainty in uncertainty hurts even more. Last time he turned to the bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table because he thought he would be alone forever. This time he turns to the bottle because he knows, were circumstances different, he would never be alone again.

\---

Copley’s gotten her on a chartered flight with assorted high-powered types to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He told her to wear a pantsuit, use her corporate lawyer identity, and not ask too many questions.

Joe and Nicky will meet her at the airport and drive her up to the house in the mountains, where they’ll regroup from their summers spent apart and prepare for a spree of missions across Xinjiang, China, freeing and protecting Uighur Muslims.

Nile knows the coming months will be tough. Working in China is always a headache because of the omnipresent surveillance. Nile knows now that she grew up in what was essentially a ghetto, that she was systematically denied access, opportunities, safety, basic human rights because of the color of her skin. Ethnic cleansing is a whole different magnitude of trauma, but she has enough shared experiences to feel the injustice of it personally. She hopes they will be able to do some good. She knows it won’t be easy. She suspects she will probably weep against Joe and Nicky and Quỳnh’s shoulders more times than she will count.

She wishes could have Booker here by her side, watching her six during missions and holding her hand before and after. He knows her past and her pain better than any of the others, knows how it fuels the fire that drives her and also knows how badly she can be burned if something fans the flames too hot and too high. She presses her fingers to her lips and remembers, the feel of his mouth and the taste of his skin. As the miles stretch out between them, a small piece of herself is missing, getting further and further away.

She twists towards the window, away from prying eyes. She keeps her shoulders and her body still and poised, desperately trying to keep her cover, but nevertheless feels the tears slowly begin to track down her face. Two visits in two years seems like a luxury that fate (or Andy) will not afford them again any time soon.

\---

Booker sits at his kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket, with his head in his hands and the good, expensive, American bourbon beside him. He keeps thinking about Erasmus.

He is proud of that damn painting. Nile was delighted by it, and together they put it to excellent use. But mostly he thinks of scattering the oak ashes between the alleyway cobbles, of standing in front of the easel till his feet ached or his hand cramped, of looking at the final copy after checking all of his metrics and feeling deep in gut that it was _right_.

He takes a sip of the bourbon and lets it swirl around his mouth before swallowing it down, a little smoky, a little sweet, a little fire.

_I need a project_ , he thinks and wonders what it will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently writing these two be angsty about each other when they're apart comes much more easily that writing them together?
> 
> The genocide of Uighur Muslims, an ethnic minority group in Western China, has not been officially recognized as such by the UN, but most experts agree that China's use of concentration camps, forced sterilization and other practices, at minimum, constitutes cultural genocide (the eradication of cultural traditions, practices and institutions) if not physical genocide. [This piece in The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/10/chinas-war-on-uighur-culture/616513/) does an excellent job talking about the pressure Uighur ex-pats feel to preserve their culture as China's efforts to eradicate it continue.
> 
> Many thanks to the BoN groupchat for their thoughts on Booker's depression as related to but separate from his alcoholism.  
> And many many thanks to those of you who are reading this so carefully and thoughtfully as it gets posted.


	9. The Thing with Feathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> Alcoholism as an unhealthy coping method for depression and thoughts of low self-worth.
> 
> A massive thanks and shout-out to the lovely marbletopempire for being the most excellent writing buddy, kindred spirit, and beta reader.

**Four months earlier, Summer, Year Two of Exile**

Booker’s phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number: _I’ll be in Paris for a bit, starting next week. Can I crash? N._

His response is immediate: _Of course. However long you need._

When his thinking brain gets back on line, the panic begins: was he too easy, too desperate? No, just friendly and accommodating. He hasn’t seen her in almost 9 months -- but who’s counting -- and eagerness is a perfectly reasonable reaction. _Right?_

He spends the two days after her text cleaning. Empty bottles get pulled off of every surface in the flat. He dusts the bookshelves, scrubs the bathroom tiles, borrows a vacuum from his upstairs neighbor.

Four days after her text, the buzzer chimes and she is waiting on his doorstep. _Be cool, Le Livre._ With slightly shaky hands he pulls the identification tags over his head and places them in a small ceramic dish on the side board. He feels momentarily bereft without their presence against his breast but then he opens the door and Nile is standing there with a hip cocked and a duffle over each shoulder. “Booker,” she says, with affection in her voice and joy on her face.

“Nile,” he returns, feeling his mouth curve into a smile.

She waltzes past him into his flat, drops both duffles and collapses onto his couch as if she’d never left.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this couch, after the year I’ve had.” She sighs, sinks into the cushions for a moment. He freezes. He knows he shouldn’t have, knows he should act casually. Nile didn’t _mean_ anything by her comment. But the haphazard reminder of everything he’s missed, even if it was painful and terrible and spent sleeping in the dirt, makes him flash with something between anger and despair.

It gets worse, though. It gets worse when she notices, when she sits up and sees his hurt and says, “Shit, Book. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s fine,” he says tightly.

“No, it’s not. I—”

“Nile.” Her pity is more than he can bear.

She raises her hands in surrender, says nothing more. A truce. She crosses over to the kitchen. “You want coffee?” Her tone is light, casual. He wonders how much of it is an act for his benefit.

“Sure.” Really, he should be the one making her coffee. Really, he wants something much more potent than coffee. Instead, he slips into one of the chairs at his kitchen table and waits, his head in his hands. When brewed coffee starts dripping into the pot, Nile slides into the seat across from him.

“What you been up to?”

“Nothing much.” It is both a truth and a lie and the words feel sour on his tongue. He feels like he needs her to _know_ but also cannot be the one to tell her. How much pain he has felt, how much he has numbed himself during these dark, cold months.

She nods, and takes him at his word. He wants to scream, to cry, to pound the table with his fists, to pull the bottle of good bourbon down from the shelf and drain it in a single go, cost and taste be damned.

He stands up, turns away from her. His hands scrub at his temples. “How long are you staying?” He aims for casual but he’s sure she’ll sense the tension behind his words.

“Is four months too much to ask?”

He whirls around, hands dropping to the back of the chair for support. Suddenly his stomach feels like it has plummeted onto the stone floor beneath his feet. Her expression is sheepish, uncertain. He opens his mouth to protest that “a bit” and “four months” are hardly synonyms, when she cuts him off.

“Look, the team’s on a break and nobody likes playing a third wheel. I don’t want to impose or anything, but I-- I wanted to see you.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

The coffee maker chimes, alerting them that it is done brewing, giving his heart and his mind a reprieve from the casual explosion of her last words. Nile rises from her chair. She pulls down two mugs from the cabinet, the handmade ceramic one he loves because it fits perfectly in his palm, and the one she got him as a joke last summer that says “I parle le French.” It might be the stupidest gift he’s ever received, but he hasn’t found it in himself to get rid of it. She pours out the coffee and sets the handmade mug in front of her own seat, the other mug in front of him. With a scowl from him and a laugh from her, she switches them, and then raises the mug with it’s stupid saying to her lips.

After all that, the only thing he can manage is: “You can stay as long as you’d like.”

“Oh good.” She grins at him. “Because I’m perfectly capable of lounging around and reading good books in famous European cities on my own, but I’d much rather do it with company.”

Her smile and her ease, the comfort she feels in his home, all of it is infectious. He smiles, takes a sip of his own coffee, feels less like he is in free fall.

And she said _reading_. Books. They can talk about books.

“Reading anything good?”

She shrugs. “It’s been busy. But -ah- well, Joe, um… he claims that _Persuasion_ is the best of Austen’s novels, so I was going to start in on seeing if he’s right. You?”

“ _The Scarlet Letter_.”

“Shit, Book. For fun?”

“Yes?”

“I had to read it in Ms. Elsepeth’s 11th grade English class. I would not call the experience fun.”

“It’s... relatable?”

He feels her eyes rake over his face, probing. She begins to speak but then closes her mouth before any sound comes out. Her gaze darts down to her coffee then back to him. It’s awkward. Undeniably. He feels like he should say something else, but he hasn’t really talked to another soul in… months? Maybe he should have lied, said something about how he was interested in 19th Century American literature. Maybe he should have said anything, anything but essentially admit this dark truth, that he feels he is both Hester and Dimmesdale, publicly ostracized and secretly self-flagellating. _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

He closes his eyes, takes a long sip from his mug, hoping the whole thing will just go away. He hears her move away from the table, the exhale of the couch cushions as she flops down on them.

“You coming?” she calls, casually. He knows he is staring, but she’s got her feet propped on his coffee table and she’s waving her paperback at him. _What is she…_

“I said,” she continues, “that reading good books in famous European cities would be more enjoyable with company, didn’t I?”

_Mon dieu, this woman._

\---

Booker is an absolute mess.

That much was clear from the moment he opened his door and the flat smelled oppressively of citrus-scented cleaners. Nile’s mother used to say that _only those with something to hide clean frantically before the arrival of guests_. Nile had lived in this flat for almost half a year and it never smelled like soap.

And then, without thinking, she’d gone and fucked it up almost immediately. This was a break for her, but not for him. She saw the way he froze, the way things crumpled behind his eyes. She heard his tight “Nile,” a warning and a supplication.

She’d forgotten that he hadn’t always been the person who laid out in the sunshine and stroked Quỳnh’s hair with a soft smile, or sat next to her beneath the hanging wisteria and talked about his favorite book. Back when they had started the thing with Quỳnh, he’d been an utter and unfeeling ass. She’d forgotten, in her absence, in her rose-tinted memories of last summer.

She meant what she’d said, though, about wanting to see him. She liked him, she did, and his apartment felt more familiar than anywhere else she’d stayed in her whirlwind of immortal life. She wanted to spend her break from the team lounging in famous European cities, yes. It was better than trailing Nicky and Joe to their home in Porto or going horsepacking with Andy and Quỳnh through the Ural Mountains. But really, really, if she was honest with herself, and an irascible Booker definitely helped her be honest with herself, she wanted to spend her time away from the team in this European city, in this shitty apartment, on this shitty couch, drinking Booker’s shitty coffee till she caved and dragged him to a cafe. Because it was the most familiar place of her stupid immortal life. And because, despite whatever funk was happening at the moment, she liked him.

She doesn’t know if he was kidding about _The Scarlet Letter_. She suspects not, suspects that he is actually comforted by reading about the pain of those characters. She _really_ does not know what to do with _that_. So instead, she kicks off her sandals and sticks her bare feet beneath his thigh for comfort. He doesn’t seem to mind.

They’re still on the couch later that evening, with take out containers on the coffee table, when a yawn overtakes Nile’s body.

“I’m kicking you out,” she says, and nudges him with her foot.

“The bed’s got fresh sheets on it, whenever you’re ready to retire.” He says this casually, barely glancing up from his book. Like it is a line he’s prepared and practiced.

“No way. I already kicked you out of your bedroom once. It’s not happening again.”

“It’s not like I get back pain.”

“It’s not like I get back pain.” She glares at him. She’d forgotten how fucking stubborn he could be about stupid, stupid things. “If this is about your misguided notions of chivalry again, goddammit Book, I’m fine on the couch.”

“Absolutely not. You’re a guest. Hence, bed.”

“If I offer a compromise, are you going to actually listen or are you just going to sleep on the couch no matter what, like an ass?”

She sees him snort at that before meeting her eyes. She feels a tiny thrill run through her at the recognition that she’d read him correctly.

“Your proposal?”

“That bed’s plenty big for two. Quỳnh and I shared. You and I can, too.”

\---

He does not know how she talked him into this.

That’s a lie. He does know: she used _that_ voice to issue him a challenge and he has never been able to deny her. Like kryptonite.

So, he finds himself lying on his back, his body pushed as far away from Nile’s as possible, his left hand gripping the edge of the mattress to keep from falling off.

He can almost smell the shea butter of her lotion. If he turns his head, he can see her side rising and falling. They are not touching, not even close, but his skin tingles with the slight heat radiating from her.

She is right here. She is in his bed.

He has never felt more distant from her.

\---

Sharing a bed isn’t a big deal. She did it all the time during sleep-overs growing up, with Andy in some of their dodgier hide outs, with Quynh all of last summer. Sharing the bed with Booker was the most logical solution.

So, Nile had wrapped up her hair, put on her moisturizer, and curled up on the right side of the bed, the side she’d occupied the previous summer.

She doesn’t look over her shoulder when he joins her. It is fine. Two friends sharing a bed. As friends do, when there is only one bed. He moves around a bit, settling in, then stills. She listens for his breathing and can barely detect it. She imagines him like the sarcophagus of a medieval knight, lying prone, arms folded in prayer across his chest. The image makes her self conscious of her own breathing, that the expansion of her side into the mattress will disturb him. She is very awake, in bed with an unfamiliar man who is lying so still he might as well be dead.

_Well, fuck it._

She rolls onto her stomach, pulls the sheet up to her chin, smushes the pillow under her head. This is better accommodation than her last couple of sleeps, and she isn’t giving it up because Booker has decided to imitate a statue.

Somehow she falls asleep shortly thereafter, but every slight shift in the mattress on the other side of the bed seems to lull her back into a state of semi-consciousness. She’s pretty sure there is a moment in the middle of the night where they are both rearranging themselves and they lock eyes across the pillows.

She wakes before him in the morning, as she always has. Though neither her body nor her mind feel particularly well rested, she’s not staying in bed any longer than necessary. Especially not when Booker has an elbow hooked over his face, stretching the ratty t-shirt across his… _nope, Nile, not this again._

Coffee, though? Coffee sounds highly necessary for whatever this day might bring.

\---

“Booker, what is _this_?”

Booker has barely rubbed the sleep from his eyes or entered the main room of the flat. And yet, there is Nile holding a certain object in her hands and looking at him with questions in every inch of her expression.

“It’s my Erasmus by Hans Holbien the Younger.” He tosses the line over his shoulder, pads into the kitchen, pours himself a mug of coffee, tips some whiskey in for good measure. He feels Nile’s gaze follow him sharply, like pricks upon the back of his neck. He is not awake enough for this conversation. Apparently, the universe doesn’t care.

“This is supposed to be in the Louvre.”

“Theirs still is.” He turns and leans back against the kitchen counter, scratches at his beard. If there’s a little bit of a smirk on his face, well…

She looks at the painting and then back at him. “You made this?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s-- It’s so good.”

“Ah, well, there’s only a twenty percent chance it would pass a carbon dating test, but they’d run all the other kinds of tests first and it would pass enough of those that nobody would bother with the expense. Probably. And the nose is a bit off. Could never quite--”

“Booker.” His name on her lips, rich and round, cuts him off. She’s grinning at him, with his painting still cradled between her fingertips, and if that doesn’t shoot a thrill strait to his belly, he’s not sure what will.

“This-- this forgery,” she continues, “is so good I thought you’d _stolen_ it. I was about to chew you out for storing a 500 year old painting propped behind the television.”

“Andy stores her actual Rodin in a cave.”

“Which is almost unforgivable.”

He snorts into his coffee, because yes, it is. Almost as soon as the fondness hits his brain, the pain comes barreling in behind. Andy, who was now mortal. Andy, who he shot. Andy, who he’d never see alive again. He sets down his coffee and reaches straight for the whiskey.

He feels, once again, Nile’s shrewd eyes on him. He is sure, if he looks, he will find judgement there, and he simply cannot bear that small disgrace on top of everything else.

“We should put this dude on display.”

He stares at her, blankly, bottle poised on his lips. Her words, her soft expression for the paining are about the furthest thing from his conception of how this conversation would go.

She walks over to the double height section of his bookshelves where he keeps his art books, the ones that are always oversized and weird shapes. She leans the portrait of Erasmus against them, runs a hand down the side to make sure it will stay.

“That’ll do for now,” she says as she turns to him.

There is something like pride in her eyes.

_A wretched bastard like me doesn’t deserve it._

He drops into one of the kitchen chairs and his head thunks on the table.

He thinks about the first man he knows he killed, an equally pathetic sop forced, like him, to fight, but for a different king.

He thinks of having the life choked out of him by the noose, only to gasp awake and choke and gasp and choke again and again for days.

He thinks of sitting at Mélanie’s deathbed, holding her hand and feeling utterly impotent.

He thinks of all the visas he wasn’t able to forge in the early 1940’s in the hours his body succumbed to sleep, of all the people who died horrible deaths as a result.

He thinks of pulling the trigger on the bullet that could have killed Andy.

He thinks of being strapped to a table in a lab, of Nicky’s frosty silence and Joe’s lashing anger.

Nile is goodness and strength and hope. She is everything he is not.

A bitter laugh spills from his lips. To think that at Goussainville he was so certain that destiny or God or whatever had finally given him someone to share in his existence. To be so foolhardy, so stupidly optimistic. He could never be worthy of her.

\---

Nile sees Booker’s head fall to the table. When he raises it again, there is something glazed and distant, in his expression and his movement.

She asks him if he wants to head down to the Seine or back to that quiet little spot on Montmartre hill. He shakes his head, curls in on himself like a dog who’s been kicked, and reaches for the bottle.

So Nile spends the rest of the day powering through Persuasion on Booker’s couch and watching him slowly self-destruct only a few feet away. He barely speaks, seems to spend hours staring at the walls of his apartment. Nile sets food down in front of him and he barely touches it.

Over the next couple of days, Booker traces a well oiled orbit from the bed to the bottle and back again. She can count the number of sentences he has spoken to her on her fingers. When she speaks to him, his eyes flick to her and then immediately dart away, as if she’s dangerous, as if she could hurt him.

So Nile largely leaves him be. She reads. She hooks her laptop up to his television. Summer has arrived with her to Paris and Booker’s apartment has no air conditioning. It’s hot, but Nile was deployed to the fucking desert. She can deal. Though she knows there are spots in Paris where the leafy green of ancient trees would help abate the summer heat, Nile doesn’t especially feel like exploring alone. She came here for _company_ and this arrangement is _fine_.

She sleeps poorly, rigidly beside him for yet more nights, until one morning when she wakes up she’s decided that things are _not_ in fact fine. She’s had enough of his shit coffee and his shit attitude, so when he emerges from the bedroom, she says, “Let’s grab coffee from the cafe down the street you like.”

He shrugs and points at the coffee maker.

_I am so fucking done with this._

Nile tilts her head to the side to crack her neck, sets her shoulders back and square. “Sit.”

He turns from the counter, takes one look at her and raises both hands in surrender. He does as he’s bid.

She braces her arms on the table and leans on them, into his space.

“Your hospitality is shit, you know that?”

He laughs, that stupid little self-pitying laugh.

“That,” she says, pointing at him, “that right there, is fucking insufferable. You have your pain and your grief, and I’m not trying to tell you that it’s not real or it shouldn’t hurt. But sitting here, doing nothing but letting it consume you? That’s some fucking white privilege bullshit.”

She leans back and assesses him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to respond. _And you know what? That’s fine. That’s good._

She grabs her backpack from the hook by the door. “I’m going out. Get your head out of your ass by the time I get back?”

Maybe it’s a little mean, but _honestly_ she’s pissed. He can be so much better than a stupid white boy wallowing in man pain. She knows this. The problem is that he has to realize it too.

Nile doesn’t return to the apartment till late that evening. When she flips on the lights, she notices a piece of paper on the floor with something shiny -- _fuck_ , her identification tags -- coiled on top of it. She stoops and picks them up. The note says simply, “I’m sorry.”

_Oh Booker_ , she thinks. _Not like this._

His head jerks up when she enters the bedroom, no pretence of sleep, eyes wide and glassy. She doesn’t know what to say to that, to him, so she gathers her things and gets herself ready for bed in the bathroom.

When she returns and slides on to her side of the bed, she offers the only thing she feels she can. “I promise I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

\---

When Booker wakes, he is not alone. He begins to reach for the pistol stashed under the mattress, when there’s a soft “Hey.”

_Nile._

He turns and finds her stretched out on her side, with her head propped up on one hand. She is already dressed for the day, except for the silk wrapping her hair.

“Here,” she says and lifts the metal chain with tags towards him. “These are yours. Still.”

He reaches out and takes the tags in his hand and feels the chain of metal balls fall over the back of his fist.

His head hurts and he doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

“You ever seen Mean Girls?” she continues, as if she has not just knifed into his soul and sewn it back together in one fell swoop.

He shakes his head.

“Well then it won’t mean anything when I tell you to _get dressed, loser, we’re getting coffee_. Be ready to leave in fifteen?”

It’s a question, but Booker knows it isn’t, really. He nods and then his eyes follow her as she springs out of bed, her fingers already picking at the knot on her scarf.

He pulls his pillow over his face and groans. He feels like the wires in his brain have shorted out. None of this is what he expected. The scene this morning is almost stupidly domestic and completely at odds with her words to him yesterday. He’d meant the necklace as a goodbye and yet here it was back in his hands. Here she was still in his flat. _What in the actual hell._

Somehow, he is dressed and ready in fourteen minutes. He lays her dog tags back in their dish and then she ushers him out the door and down the street, in the direction of the cafe that she has remembered is his neighborhood favorite.

They sit outside and the warmth of the early morning sunshine curls around his shoulders. Save for the necessities of ordering, neither has spoken and the silence prickles between them.

He notices when Nile takes a deep, preparatory breath, and he feels the muscles in his back tense ever so slightly. She begins, “I’m not going to apologize for what I said yesterday. But I’ve no interest in flagellating you more than you already do yourself, either.”

Her words are blunt and honest and, as with everything else she’s said to him this morning, he doesn’t know how to respond, doesn’t know how to tell her how much further her words have pierced his armor in just the few days of her visit than Joe or Nicky or Andy ever did in all their years together.

“Look,” she continues, “frankly, Booker, I want to be your friend and you’re making it pretty much impossible at the moment. Last summer, with Quỳnh, we had a sort of mission. Even when something reminded me of my mom or you busted my ass about being a Marine, there was this other thing to think about, to keep me, keep us, going. Maybe we can do that again?”

_Is this what a second chance looks like?_ The question strikes him as Nile finishes speaking. Despite the fact that he cannot die, he realizes he’s never been offered one before. Not growing up in the streets and factories of Marseille, where one misstep meant prison or death. Not in the choice between the certain death of execution or the likely death of the Russian campaign. Not with his Mélanie or the boys. Not with Andy or Nicky or Joe. He realizes he knows how to accept punishment, to express remorse, to live with the consequences. But this? To be offered forgiveness, acceptance, a chance to try again?

“We can think of something.” His voice is scratchy and hoarse when he speaks and he realizes it’s the first thing he’s spoken aloud in more than an entire day.

She smiles slowly and then a small pain blooms in his shin under the table. “Welcome back from your man pain cave. It’s better out here.”

He huffs a laugh into his coffee. “A kick in the shins is hardly welcoming.”

“Seemed appropriate.”

There’s that smile playing across her face, the one that’s wry and challenging at the same time, the one she shot him in the cave just before he spilled his deepest insecurities to a woman he’d barely met.

He feels warm, not just from the sunshine and the summer heat, but inside, in his head, too. Only in feeling this way again, feeling the tiny bit of comfort in his soul, does he realize how long it has been absent.


	10. Happiness: Found and Stolen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes: one of our immortal friends in this chapter plans a death (and revival). Though technically a suicide, it is not accompanied by any of the typical psychology surrounding suicide. Nevertheless, if you wish to avoid this moment, skip the section that begins "Booker sees her appear..." and the one following it.
> 
> Shoutout, once again, to marbletopempire, for being the best writing buddy I could ask for.

It has officially gotten too hot for hot coffee. Thus, Nile has scrounged together all of the fixings for an iced coffee from Booker’s kitchen -- tall glass, coffee, milk, ice cubes -- except for a straw. Naturally. So the ice cubes fall into her face each time she takes a sip. It’s _irritating_ , but worth it.

Sort of like her first weeks here in Paris.

Booker still carries his flask. He still gets irascible. But since the morning at the cafe, he at least talks to her, jokes occasionally. He’s joined her watching something each evening, even made a couple of selections.

No mission yet, though. He said they’d think of something, but he hasn’t had any ideas. Neither has she.

Once again, Nile finds herself on the couch staring at Booker’s painting.

She had known he was a forger, of course. The team had mentioned it from time to time, usually in irritated grumbles about how Booker would have handled this or that. But documents and identities were one thing; to recreate a painting? Much less utilitarian. The more she thinks about it, the more she finds it intriguing. There is absolutely no way this is his first. Where the did he learn to paint? And like this?

Nile doesn’t usually go for artists or bad boys -- her momma raised her to think _practically_ about these things -- but maybe she’d watched way too much _White Collar_ growing up because, well, there is something indescribably sexy about a man who can paint because he is going to need a forgery for his next con.

When Booker emerges from the bedroom, Nile is still sitting on the couch, iced coffee in hand, eyes taking in all the small, remarkable details of the painting that she can’t get enough of: the subtle patterning of the curtain the background, the subtle shades of almost-black elucidating the folds of the man’s cloak, the scratchings on the paper that represented words but weren’t.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

With a mug of hot coffee in hand -- the man is a masochist, clearly -- Booker settles onto the couch next to her. She sees him splash some whiskey into the mug. Maybe the good folks of AA wouldn’t agree, but considering just days ago he’d drunk straight from the bottle without bothering with the pretense of anything more socially acceptable, she considers this a vast improvement. She likes to think he does, too.

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, allowing the sounds from outside his windows, of Parisians greeting a new day, going about their business, to settle about the two of them.

As she sits next to Booker on the couch and drinks her coffee to the mundane sounds of 21st Century life, she realizes why she is so drawn to this image. She cares about Booker, is proud of him, yes, but Erasmus? Not an iota of anything for some long dead white dude famous because he had _Thoughts_. Yet, however important the man might’ve been in his life or after it, here he’s depicted at work, the 16th century equivalent of a plandid. It feels like a window into his actual life, shockingly normal and human.

“Have I mentioned how good the painting is?”

“Once or twice.” He ducks his head and she thinks there might be a hint of pink tinging his cheeks beneath that beard.

“Tell me about making it.”

“It’s egg tempera on oak. Hand-mixed the substrate and the colors. Uh- don’t lick it? There’s some pretty toxic stuff in some of the pigments.” She laughs at that, that the first thing out of that big brain of his is a worry about the potential harm, no matter how absurd or inconsequential.

“I wouldn’t dare lick your painting, and it wouldn’t harm me anyway.”

“Fair enough,” he concedes with a small laugh.

They've both been looking at the painting throughout this conversation. But she hears a smile in his voice and wants to see if there’s one on his face, too. She lowers her eyes to her glass and then turns her head towards him. There _is_ a smile on his face, small and private. Then, as if he can sense her gaze on him, he turns his head and his eyes meet hers. _Caught_. She turns her head back to the painting, but there’s a grin growing on her face as she does so.

After a moment more of silence, where she can feel him watching her still, she says, “You produced this on the first try?”

“God no.” Another huff of a laugh. “This was maybe the tenth? eleventh? I lost track. Burned the rest of them out in the alley.”

“Burned?”

“Got rid of the evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“I don’t want my land lady finding all of my failed attempts in the trash and calling in an anonymous tip to the police.”

She laughs, but notices he’s not joining her, his expression dead serious.

“What?” He asks, uncomfortable and defensive. “It’s forgery opsec 101.” A beat, then. “Especially if you have a nosy land lady who takes out the trash personally.”

“Booker,” she says, slowly, connections sparking inside her brain. “Why -- out of all the paintings in the world -- did you forge this one?”

“You don’t know?”

She is about to shake her head, but stops herself. Because, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she’s pretty sure she does know.

“Were you planning to actually do the heist we planned last summer?”

“Not actively, but…” He shrugs, takes a large swallow of his coffee.

“But what?”

“Just in case? And why not? It’s not like I had anything else to do.” There’s that bitterness in his voice that she loathes. He takes another large swallow of his drink.

And then, it’s like the cogs in her mind ratchet forward and suddenly mesh together perfectly.

“Book,” she says, “how do you feel about stealing a painting?”

His eyes are wide with surprise and questions and there are butterflies in her stomach. _Did you did you really just casually suggest grand fucking larceny? Who ARE you?_

“Nile Freeman, did you just…?”

Apparently their minds are freaking out in precisely the same vein. _Well, in for a penny, in for a pound._

“I did.” She says it with a grin and confidence she doesn’t totally feel.

He extends his hand. “I’m in.” They shake on it.

_Oh my Lord, what are they doing?_

\---

He thinks he will be a very, very old man indeed when Nile Freeman ceases to surprise him.

Just a few days ago she had jolted him out of a dark place with a literal kick to the shins and a metaphorical kick in the balls. Now she wants them to steal a painting from the most famous museum in the world.

Later that afternoon, he finds himself sitting across from her at his favorite cafe. The afternoon heat throbs against his neck and he envies Nile’s floppy sun hat, but the temperature means the patio is devoid of nearby eavesdroppers, though the sounds off the street will muffle their conversation somewhat. It is a smart choice. Booker’s impressed.

“I’ve never stolen anything before,” she blurts, once their drinks arrive.

He revises his previous opinion to good instincts. He’s not sure just coffee is going to cut it for this conversation.

“Never?”

“Never even jumped the turnstiles of the L.”

“Baby’s first larceny.”

“Teach me, o sensei.”

She bursts into laughter at her own joke and he can’t help but join her.

She takes several calming breaths, and then: “When was the last time you did something like this?”

“Joe went through an art repatriation phase after World War II.”

“Of course.” She radiates fondness for Joe but her smile might just suggest that maybe it’s for him too?

Over the next hour or so they sketch out options for the heist. They have the recon from last summer, and, though that should be updated, it's enough to get them started.

Nile might be a novice at this sort of mission, but she asks all the right questions.

_What’s the point of having someone on the inside if they don’t use their credentials to get close to the target?_

_A coordinated exit increases risk, agreed, but doesn’t it also provide additional opportunities for communication if something goes south?_

_Won’t the timing depend on the closures and attachments on the frame itself?_

Booker knows Nile is smart: he spent hours last summer listening to her teach Quỳnh about all kinds of things he would have struggled to explain in any of his languages. But this is beyond smart, it’s an ability to hold multiple contingencies together in her head at once and evaluate each from all angles. No wonder she had proven herself as a Marine. Which reminds him…

“How did you figure it out, that I was...?”

He can barely say the words. She jerks up at that, her eyes narrow.

“The one who betrayed them?”

He hums in agreement.

She looks him square in the eyes and says, “The magazine was empty.”

His brow furrows and so she continues. “After you left to run recon, I told Andy that I couldn’t join the team, that I was going back to my family.”

She closes her eyes, takes a steadying breath. He wants to reach out his hand, pull her into a hug, do something to ease whatever stab of grief she’s feeling. He hadn’t known. This hadn’t been his intention all.

“And then we swapped guns: Andy took the one with the stabilizer and handed me the two-toned one. The one that you’d handed her initially. When I was about to ditch the car and the weapons, I ejected the magazine -- safety and all that -- and it was empty. It shouldn’t have been. That’s when I figured it out.”

He sits back in his chair, astonished. He shakes his head and finally says, “You’re impressive, you know that?”

She ducks her head at his words, the brim of her sunhat obscuring most of her face. He can still see the curl of her ear and the line of her jaw, and maybe he’s imagining things, but he thinks she’s pleased.

\---

The sun has just started to peek over the buildings around Booker’s flat when Nile emerges from his bathroom, teeth brushed, hair wrapped up, and ready for bed.

As she does, the front door of the apartment opens.

"Bonjour, Monsieur Pierre Durand.”

Booker closes the door and slumps against it. “Bonjour, mam’zelle Salimata Cissé.”

He pulls at the tie at his neck and shucks off the navy blazer. He continues speaking in French, as he heads toward the kitchen to pour himself a drink. Presumably his grumbling is some reiteration of how they have to wear the “stuipd suits” even when there are no visitors on the premises. It’s been just a few days that they’ve been establishing their covers and working night shifts as a security guard and custodial worker, respectively. Already, she’s learned he doesn’t realize what language he’s speaking when he’s this tired. It’s not like he’s really talking _to_ her anyways.

Until she notices that there’s silence stretching between them and he’s looking at her from the kitchen like he’s expecting an answer and she has absolutely no idea what he asked.

“In English, Book?” A yawn follows immediately after.

“ _Merde_. That was all in French wasn’t it?” She nods. He runs a hand through his hair, loosening the strands combed and gelled straight back. “I asked how your shift went?”

“My brain hurts from speaking in Arabic with the other women and my feet would be hella sore from all the mopping if it weren’t for, you know…”

He hums in agreement.

“Debrief after sleep?”

“Yeah. I’ll be in there shortly.”

When the alarm goes off hours later, they both bolt upright from long habit, her from military training, him from years of constant vigilance. As they have the last few afternoons, they find themselves sharing a small laugh at their reactions.

“You first,” he says. Nile nods and climbs out of bed. She sees him flop backwards.

“Don’t you dare fall back asleep on me.”

“That was _one_ time.”

“Sure.” She says it with a light smirk and he grins back. “You almost made us _both_ late on our second day of work.”

In the shower moments later, she thinks back on the events of the last week. How he’d created new identities tailor made for this mission in one afternoon sitting at his laptop at his kitchen table. Like it was nothing. How he’d slowly been memorizing door codes and pickpocketing access cards from his fellow security guards with nobody the wiser. How he’d come back from each shift and added additional security measures on their schematics with such nonchalance. Like he hadn’t had to remember that information for hours without forgetting a single detail.

And he called her “impressive.” Next to him? Hardly.

\---

They synchronize their watches before leaving the apartment that evening. Since they won’t have coms, it’s an absolute necessity. Still the act makes her feel like she is about to be in a Bond movie.

“Do well,” she tells him before they part to take different Metro lines to the museum. They’d agreed the day before that luck would have nothing to do with their plan. It would work because they would execute it as planned or improvise within their agreed upon contingencies. It would work because they would make it work. No room for the uncertainties of Lady Luck.

“Do well,” he told her in turn.

_Let’s go steal a painting._

\---

Booker looks around at the other guards assembled for the night shift. Pierre Bertrand has been assigned rotating patrol in the Sully wing, which suits him just fine for the set up he needs to do. He’s certain that Bertrand will be able to swap with one of the blokes in the video room when one of them starts jonesing for a smoke between their pm and am breaks.

He looks down and checks his watch. So far so good.

\---

Nile once again thanks Yusuf Al-Kaysani for being a stubborn ass about his “most useful” language. He will be insufferable when she tells him this story. She cannot dwell on it now.

She and Yasmine have been chatting since her first shift: recognizing Nile’s Maghrebi dialect and poor French , Yasmine took Nile, no, took Sali Cissé under her wing. It was nice having a friend, someone to chat and gossip with on the long shifts. Nile tried not to focus on the fact that whatever was between them had an expiration date and that expiration date was today.

At Nile’s urging, Yasmine got them both assigned bathrooms and trash collection in the Richeleau wing. Step one: accomplished.

They work their way across the ground floor, emptying trash cans, scrubbing and sanitizing bathroom sinks and stalls. Nile idly thinks that her mother would be appalled, both by the kind of work and the reason for it. Her mother had cleaned offices and nursed the elderly and waited tables so her children wouldn’t have to. But then Nile recalls what was about to happen, about their plan, and determination settles at the base of her neck, poised, ready. She’s always thrived on the satisfaction of a task well completed. This, she hopes, will be no different.

And then, it’s go time. She makes her excuses, casually climbs stairs to the top floor. She unlocks the supply closet, grabs the painting and supplies from where she’d stashed them, places them in the rolling garbage can. She shifts her weight to the balls of her feet, waits for the signal.

\---

Booker stands in the electrical control room, watching the seconds tick by on his watch. 15 seconds. 10 seconds. His fingers are poised above the switches and wires, ready to create the necessary chaos. 5 seconds.

\---

Beneath the supply closet door, Nile sees the lights dim, darken, then flash back on. Just how he said they would. She trusts him, that though the lights are on, the cameras are down and the security systems rebooting. She opens the door, looks both ways and feels for an instant like she’s playing the world’s most dangerous game of hide and seek. As per the plan, there’s nobody nearby. She wheels the garbage can around the corner and stops at the designated spot. She lays the det cord around the panes of the dormer window, then heads for the target and the only part of the plan she couldn’t practice and time. She hears the shattering of glass in her wake.

\---

As the alarm sounds in the far reaches of the Denon wing, Booker slips back into the security control center to blank screens and shouts and fingers flying across keyboards.

Booker hears the directives come in over the radio. The building is on lockdown. Nobody in or out till the breach has been resolved. All non-security staff to report to the operations office immediately. He grins. Procedure by the book. Perfect.

He slips back out of the control room, hoping upon hope Nile’s piece of this is going to plan, too.

\---

Nile’s fingers fumble a bit over the latches on the frame. The real Erasmus clearly hasn’t been in for restoration and maintenance in a while. Nile doesn’t know much about museum paintings, just what she’s learned from Booker in the last few weeks, but she’s not impressed by the relative shabbiness.

Once prised open, though, the work of swapping the paintings is the work of a moment. Erasmus is back up on the wall and Nile headed slowly down the gallery with 30 seconds to spare. She rounds the corner, doubles back through a parallel set of galleries. It’s then that she hears the announcements on her radio. The building is on lockdown. The operations office is the sub-basement.

They’ve got enough time.

\---

Booker sees her appear at the top of the stairwell just as he turns the corner on the last half flight.

She pulls the backpack out of her trash can, extends it to him. Their fingers brush as the loop of the handle shifts from her to him. This is the part of the plan he’d insisted on, but she hates.

_We have to take advantage of the impossibility of our condition. Nobody else can pull this off like we can. That’s how we’ll get away with it._

It’s a good argument, and she knows when a retreat is the best strategic option. She has agreed it is the best plan.

Nevertheless, her eyes seek out his, questioning still. She sees the determination in his jaw, takes his nod as recognition of her concern.

And then he’s gone, darting back down the gallery and towards the window she’s prepared for him.

\---

Landing on the pavement flashes pain through every molecule of his---

The next thing he is aware of is the snap of his vertebrae returning to alignment and the sear of his spinal cord refusing. The multitude of small pin pricks at the back of his fractured skull. Ribs popping back into place. Pain shoots down his leg like mice scurrying through his nerves, before reversing and running circles around his chest, then hopping out to his hands and fingers, then up the back of his neck.

_Everything fucking hurts._

There is concrete against his back and a pressure on his chest. The rest is still fuzzy, like the street lamp’s glow several feet away. When he feels his arm snap back into shoulder and the pain there begins to ebb away, he reaches up to the weight on his chest. The backpack’s there, right where it should be. He runs his hand down the side of it and feels for the corner of the painting. Still there. It’s not confirmation, but it’s something.

He sits up, and the world swims before his eyes for a moment. He coughs, and blood rises from his lungs onto his tongue. With his hands still shaking slightly -- the shock, it should pass momentarily -- he unzips the backpack and confirms that the painting, in its wrappings and cushioned by his body, has indeed survived the drop.

His mind skitters about, knowing that there are things he needs to know, that he can’t quite reach. He feels the need to move but where?

 _Nile_. She’s still inside. _Shit_. He takes two steps back towards the building, readying himself to climb the stone. Fear rises up the back of his neck. Then another switch flips in his brain, bringing with it all of the last few hours.

 _Stick to the plan._ Right. He starts jogging north and east toward Châtelet-Les Halles where, even at this hour, he can get lost among the poor, tired souls lingering in the train station.

\---

She spends hours sitting next to Yasmine locked in the cramped office, trying to chat, to appear natural. Even down in the sub-basement, she hears the sirens pull up outside the building. She instinctively clenches her fists against her uniformed thighs. Sirens never mean anything good. Her thoughts flit to Booker, conjuring images of him laying there forever unmoving, this one stupid death his last, or, worse, rousing just as the cop cars rounded the corner, of Booker stuck in a horrible French prison, again, this time for an eternity. Her heart clenches to match her fists.

Nile wants to run. She needs to punch something, _do_ something. But that is not the _plan_ , and in the _plan_ she stays here, talks to whomever she needs to talk to and heads home as normal. So she stays, and tries not to bounce her leg too obviously with her jittery anxiety, with her need to move, to no longer be beholden to these godforsaken institutions and rules and procedures.

\---

Booker unlocks the door to his flat, sets the backpack down, and then feels the adrenaline dissipate from his body, and harsh reality wade back in. He sinks onto the floor, leans his back against the couch, and takes his head in his hands.

Even with the adrenaline gone, he should feel nice, accomplished. He doesn’t. The uncertainty weighs on him, pulses against his temples. He’s had his fair share of encounters with _La PP_ , he’s almost certain he knows how things will go. They’ll take statements from everyone. The odds are that Nile’s will be short and unremarkable because they won’t have bothered to bring a translator. The museum will remain closed, but they’ll let the custodial staff out because _nothing was stolen._

But he can’t know. So his brain imagines Nile in handcuffs, Nile jailed till they get an interpreter and someone who can read micro expressions, Nile being interrogated, Nile’s immortality being discovered. He imagines having to call Andy and admit he got Nile convicted, imprisoned because he was stupid, stupid, stupid, to go along with her insane idea, to convince her they should split up in the execution of it.

He sits there, head in hands, curled in on himself and worries and worries and worries.

He sits there for minutes or hours; he can hardly tell because it feels like forever.

When he hears her key in the lock, though, he scrambles to his feet in an instant.

\---

She swings the door to Booker’s apartment open and there he is, standing, waiting.

In two quick strides, she has her arms wrapped around him, her face buried in his shoulder. His arms circle around her back and squeeze and she squeezes him too and feels all of the anxiety and fear wrung from her body by his. _He’s here. He’s okay._

“We did it,” he mumbles into the top of her head. She nods, unwilling to pull back from him, right here under her palms, alive, breathing, free.

“Don’t ever talk me into letting you do that ever again.” She says it into his shirt, and she feels a hitch in his breathing.

“Next time, no man left behind.” His voice rumbles low and gravely serious against her cheek.

She nods into his chest and squeezes him even tighter, if that’s possible, and feels him do the same. It is comfort, reassurance, even love.

She tilts her head up and their eyes lock, worry on worry, relief on relief. It’s then that it hits her.

_He’s the one I want by my side and at my back._

_He’s my person._

She doesn’t know what they’re doing. She doesn’t know what she is to him. But she has exceeded her quota on revelations for the day and that’s okay.

Right now, she is safe in his embrace and content in her fledgling understanding.


	11. What's Past is Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest thanks to marbletopempire, an excellent human, writing buddy, beta, and friend.  
> Shout out to the BoN group chat for your enthusiasm and encouragement.

Booker wakes up the next afternoon with Nile tucked into his shoulder and side and his arm around her, keeping her close.

 _Is he dreaming?_ It’s been years, hundreds, since he’s woken up to the comfort of someone with him in bed. Closeness for the sake of itself, not as the prelude or aftermath of something else.

Then, last night comes back to him, his worry over Nile, the way they had crashed into each other, in exhaustion and relief. How even after that first needful embrace they had continued to gravitate towards each other, how they had stood hip to hip in the bathroom, how they had both turned towards each other in the bed. How he had finally succumbed to his exhaustion with the softness of her skin alongside his. How right it had felt.

How right it felt now.

“Hey.” She says it with a soft smile. He feels the rumble of the air vibrating in her chest against his own.

“Hey.”

She, always an earlier riser than him, has her phone in one hand and she turns it to show him the screen.

It takes a minute for his brain to process. It’s a text message thread, with two recent messages: the first, a news article from the BBC reporting last night’s lockdown at the Louvre, the second, _Please tell me this wasn’t you and Booker._

“Copley,” she says.

“Tell him you can neither confirm--”

“Nor deny,” they finish together. He sees her grin, hears her giggle, feels her belly contracting with her laughter. His own face, expression, body follows. They collapse together, unable to stop themselves.

He momentarily wonders what this light, floaty, unfamiliar feeling is. It’s not the pride of a job well done.

_Oh, it’s joy._

Later, when he thinks back to this morning, he will come up with any number of justifications for what he does next. He’ll say it was strategic, to lay a false trail for the false trail. He’ll say it was impulsive, a split second decision. He’ll know that the truth is something closer to the actions of a man who, for the first time in years, acts out of love, not loathing.

They were supposed to go to ground in Liege, in Belgium. A city just big enough that they, that Nile, would not seem out of place, but small enough and far away enough from Paris to avoid any heat that might be headed their direction.

But when Nile slides into the passenger seat and shoots him a grin and says “Ready,” he decides that the apartment he had rented for them in Liege is staying empty. He pulls the car away from the curb and heads south rather than east.

\---

Nile doesn’t know where they’re going. This is part of the plan. Operation security. If she’d gotten stuck inside the museum, if she’d gotten pulled in for questioning, she needed to legitimately not know where Booker might’ve gone. It hadn’t seemed important this morning, or when they’d gotten in the car. She knew he’d made all the right preparations.

But, as the sun starts to sit low on the horizon when they pass through the biggest city they’ve seen since Paris, she starts to get a little bit curious.

The signs name the city “Lyon.”

The sun is generally on the right side of the car.

They’re headed south.

 _Are we going to Marseille?_ She dismisses the thought immediately. He wouldn’t be so stupid. If the authorities find the apartment in Paris, they’ll find the OM scarf hanging beneath his coat on the hook by the door.

She offers to switch drivers with him, and he declines, once again. If she can’t be of assistance, she decides a nap is in order. She shucks off the flannel she threw over her tank this morning and stuffs it between her neck and the window frame.

The next thing Nile registers is the car coming to a stop. She paws at her eyes, trying to rub the sleep from them. She starts to take stock of her surroundings: everything is bathed in thin industrial lighting, at once too bright and not enough. There are cars pulled along either side of theirs. A parking garage.

“We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.” He pulls the key from the ignition.

Nile shrugs and stretches. When she opens the door, the saltiness in the air prickles her nostrils immediately. It jolts her back into consciousness.

“Booker?” It’s a question as much as a warning. She shoots him a look over the roof of the car. “Where are we?” There are any number of towns along the southern coast of France. The ocean in the air doesn’t mean _necessarily_...

He’s looking down, at whatever’s in his hands, not meeting her eyes. He shifts his weight. She realizes that he’s _nervous_. It’d be adorable if she weren’t just a little freaked out.

And then he stills, a hand falls on the door frame, and his gaze meets hers, steady, pleading. That is answer enough.

“Trust me?”

After a breath, she says, “Yeah.” Because she does, wholly, without reservations.

“It’s not far.”

She’s not sure what that means, but she slings a duffel across one shoulder and follows him.

He leads her into a part of the city where the buildings draw close together and the streets are too narrow for cars. Lights hang from overhead and make the world glow at their feet. Potted plants frame each doorway and drape from balconies. She feels as if she has entered another world, an impressionist painting, a travel agent’s glossy brochure. If it weren’t for their luggage, for the backpack with the painting, she would loop her arm through his, as if they were the only two people in all the world with the pleasure of wandering these beautiful streets together.

He stops in front of a door painted bright blue. His key turns in the lock, and he leads her up a set of narrow stairs. He stops at one of the doors on the third floor. Another key. Another lock. Another door pushed open. He steps inside and drops his bags and crosses the room immediately. Even in the dark, she can tell there are three large windows across the front of the building. He pulls each window open, throws back the shutters. As he does, she notices a slight breeze lap against the stale dry heat surrounding her. She hears the murmur of France’s second largest city somewhere out beyond the windows. With the ambient light from outside, she can start to make out shapes draped in white sheets, probably furniture, maybe a couch, a bed in the corner.

When Booker returns to her side, he bends to the table by the door and flicks the wheel of a lighter. A flame springs into being and he touches it to the wick of a candle stick, held atop a round brass dish with a loop on the edge. Like something out of a Jane Austen movie.

“I’ll get the super to call the utility company tomorrow,” he says as he picks up the candle holder.

He starts to move off again, but she reaches out and her hand lands on his arm to stop him.

“What is this place?”

“Home,” he says. “Or the closest thing to it.”

“We won’t be tracked here?”

“No,” he says. A single syllable, clear and confident. “I can explain everything in the morning.”

She nods. She is tired and confused and worried, but the candle is casting him in a mellow light, almost dancing off the strands of his hair. Nile realizes that this is how his wife would have seen him in their many nights together, soft and warm. He’s beautiful. She realizes as her eyes rake over his face in the flickering light that he is doing the same to her. Then, suddenly something jolts him, and he takes a step back.

“Do you mind sharing a bed again tonight?” he asks, the words are tumbling out of his mouth. “There’s a bed upstairs we can set up but we’ll both get to sleep faster if we can just do one for tonight. If you’re okay---”

“That sounds nice.” She smiles, and though she knows it is a tired smile, a little lopsided, she sees him notice it, and duck his head in response.

“Follow me then.”

And she does.

\---

In the bathroom, Booker stares at himself in the mirror in the unsteady light of the candle and takes his first pull from his flask in hours.

They’ve lived together for months now. They’ve cooked for each other, made the bed together, swept the floors while the other heckles from the couch. He’s seen her in every physical state possible, sweaty from a run, damp from a shower, lively in the morning before he’s ready, fighting to stay awake for the last 20 minutes of a movie.

But all of that was in Paris. Here in Marseille, in the apartment he’s maintained since the city rebuilt itself in 1945, in the dim light of the candle that made her skin glow warm and her eyes gleam, everything felt more tender, somehow. Even the simple act of pulling the fitted sheet over the bed or of watching Nile wrap up her hair silhouetted in the window against his city at night, made him feel raw and squirmy.

He pushes the hair back from his forehead as he looks in the mirror and his mind wanders back to their very first meeting, to that night in Goussainville and the frission in his brain that this new one might be his -- his immortal companion, his soulmate, his savior -- and he was all set to fuck it up.

He takes another sip of whiskey and then screws down the cap of his flask.

Somehow, in spite of everything, Nile is still here. She’d kicked his ass and then stolen a painting with him. She’d slept alongside him and then, last night, curled up against him. She trusted him beyond what he deserved.

And he’d thought about it, in that moment earlier with the candle between them. Thought about leaning in and pressing his lips against hers, soft and gentle, a promise for everything he would try to give her for as long as they both lived.

As much as he wanted it, wanted her arms around him and her skin against his, he wanted her happy most of all, pleased with him, pleased with Marseille. He’d jerked back, mumbled like a fool about the beds in the flat, and that had been that.

\---

The next morning, Nile helps him pull the covers off the furniture, scrub down the kitchen appliances, dust every surface. He tells her about his shell company that owns the building, how the same family has had their workshop on the ground floor for generations. They decide Erasmus deserves a place of honor over the old fireplace’s mantle.

At one point Nile darts up the stairs to the small attic room. He imagines her ducking her head to avoid the sloped ceilings. When she returns to the main level, he raises an eyebrow at her in question.

“Much too hot up there,” she says, “I think I prefer staying down here, if it’s all the same to you.”

If his heart flip-flops at her words, she doesn’t need to know. Yet.

\---

They fall into a familiar routine: mornings spent wandering around the city, afternoons spent in the apartment. More often than not, Nile sprawls out on the tile floors with an iced drink seeking all the cooling power she can. They’ve visited the old harbor and the famous opera house, the Palais Longchamp, Port d’aix. Booker’s commentary is endless and effervescent. He knows this place, sees it’s beautiful, ancient strength and seedy underbelly, it’s ever present class politics, it’s welcome arms and xenophobia. He sees it all and loves it anyways. It reminds her of the way her mother talked about Chicago, about the aunties at church and at the beauty parlor clucking and advising and erupting in laughter, about lazy summers spent at the beach or playing pick-up in the street, about the KKK rallies in Marquette Park, about the demise of the local butchers and grocers and the rise of shitty chain supermarkets, about how a gang sunk its teeth into Nile’s uncle and how she would do everything to ensure Nile and her brother escaped the same fate.

This morning, as they set off into the city, he guides her along as cars start to whiz past them and the picturesque charm of Le Pantier dissipates into the kind of neighborhood where businesses pull a metal grate over the storefront at night and detritus collects along the curb. She notes that Booker’s gone quiet. He doesn’t remark on the change in scenery, doesn’t say anything at all. Nile lets him be.

They continue in silence till he pulls up in front of what is unmistakably a housing block, rectangular and utilitarian and grimey around the edges.

“This is where we used to live,” he says softly, still surveying the particular building across the street, practically identical to all the others.

She shoots him a look, because these buildings can’t be more than 40 or 50 years old.

“A row-house. Two stories. Mélanie’s parents lived on the first floor. We had the second and the boys slept up under the eaves.”

He falls silent again. His eyes have gone glassy, far-away. He’s not seeing what’s in front of him, but what this street, this place looked like at dawn of the 19th Century. She feels like he might float away, sink into the past and then again into the whiskey. She sees his fingers twitching at his sides.

She slips her hand into his, threads their fingers together. “You can tell me about them, if you want. Or I can tell you about the South Side.”

His head snaps to her, sharp, uncertain. He glances down at their clasped hands and back at her. _Freeman, you idiot._ “Is it okay?” she rushes out. “I’m sorry I--”

“More than.” He gives her hand a squeeze.

“Do you want me to start?”

He runs the hand not entwined with hers across his face. “Nile-- I--” His shoulders hunch forward and his brows knit together. “It’s been so long. I-- I don’t know.”

She tugs at his hand. “Let’s just walk.”

They leave the spot across the street from the ghost of Booker’s former home and wander through the apartment blocks. They come upon some kids kicking a soccer ball across a patch of concrete. The ball comes soaring towards them and Booker stops it with his chest, before sending it back with a clean kick. This act is greeted with a chorus of noise and thanks: “ _Merci_ ” and “ _shukraan_ ” and Nile even catches one of the older boys shout “He’s good for an old man,” in Arabic.

Throughout this whole exchange, he hasn’t once let go of her.

They continue walking. Booker glances over his shoulder, back at the boys and their game, and then says, “My three eldest were out the door almost as soon as they could walk. I gave up trying to keep track of them. They had to be home by dinner, that was the rule. Jean-Pierre, though, was always underfoot, always sitting by the stove whittling and asking questions. He was curious about everything, when at home, but so shy and hesitant whenever he stepped outside. Melanie worried about him constantly, that he was too tender footed. I think she mostly just tired of his questions, his ‘ _pourquoi? pourquoi?_.’ But she answered him always, no matter if she was elbow deep cleaning a chicken or carefully darning a pair of stockings.”

“My brother used to play the ‘why game’ with my dad.”

“The why game?”

“Dad, why do I have to eat breakfast? Because eating food in the morning gives you energy for the day. Why does food give you energy? Because it has lots of nutrients in it that your body needs. Why does food have nutrients?... you know.”

She sneaks a glance at him and there’s a softness around his eyes that warms her, regardless of the summer heat.

“I do.”

“She sounds like a remarkable woman, Mélanie.”

“She was.”

And once he begins, just like with Marseille, he can’t seem to stop talking about her. He tells of their first meeting as children at a Friday night Shabbat dinner, of how he was forced to live on the street after his parents died. Then, when they were both teenagers, she caught him stealing a loaf of bread.

“She said, ‘I’m not turning you in, Sébastien, if you come for dinner Friday night.’ And so I put on the best clothes a street rat could scrounge up and tried to wash the dirt from anywhere visible and showed up on their doorstep. Mélanie answered the door and took one look at me and grinned and said, ‘Papa is going to hate this, but Maman will love it. Come in.’ We were married a year later.”

He tells her stories in which Mélanie stalled a police inspector till Booker had time to hide his counterfeiting materials, in which she taught Phillipe how to flirt with the girl he had a crush on. She would feed any street kid who knocked on their door if they could spare it (and even sometimes when they couldn’t) and when the neighbors complained about this, she quoted Dueteronomy at them (“there shall no needy among you”) till they relented.

Nile is sure Mélanie had faults, suspects that she could be stubborn as a mule and that she did not suffer fools. But Nile knows that she tries to focus on her Dad’s laughter, his deep, resonant singing of the hymns in church, his playing catch with her in the backyard. He wasn’t a perfect human either, but memories are precious and the good ones are the ones worth the real estate in her brain.

Eventually they arrive back where they started, across the street from the long demolished row house. He stares for another minute or two at the empty space and then tugs her against him. He wraps his arms around her and holds her close and murmurs, “Thank you.”

She runs a hand up and down his spine and says, “Always,” in return.

\---

Later that afternoon, over coffee -- hers iced, his hot -- he looks at her almost shyly and says, “You never did tell me about Chicago.”

She doesn’t want to say it wasn’t the right time or you were having a moment or I didn’t want to interrupt. She knows him well enough to know that any of those things will drive him right into his own head.

Instead, she says, “We’ve got time. Maybe I’ll take you there someday.”


	12. Present Past and Future Imperfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes: Nile confronts her military service, her actions as part of an imperialist army, and the economic forces that caused her to enlist. There is also reference to the unjust and disproportionate policing of Black people in America. All of this occurs in the third section of the chapter.
> 
> Much love to marbletopempire for making this chapter better than it would have been otherwise.

“How do you feel about a celebratory coffee?”

She looks up from her toast and finds him standing with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward. It’s something he does in public sometimes, when he’s trying to look smaller than he actually is. She’s never seen him use it at home.

“Celebratory?”

“One month and no sign of INTERPOL.”

It seems hardly cause to celebrate: the plan was not to get caught, after all. It’s just about as weak of an excuse as she’s ever heard.

But with his hair falling into his eyes and the hint of hope in his expression, she decides, whatever the real reason he’s asking, she has the opportunity to make him happy.

“Do you think they’ll put chocolate in my coffee if you ask nicely enough?”

He snorts. “Still no, _ma cherie_.”

She rises as she says, “Worth a shot.” She nears him and runs her hand along his upper arm. “Give me a second to get my things, and let’s go.”

After he pulls the blue door closed behind them, he turns to her and she feels his hand at her back as he steers her towards the Old Port. It’s a quick touch, barely there at all, a reassurance. She starts to step in the indicated direction.

“Nile.”

She turns back to him, and he’s standing there, an arm and elbow extended towards her. The formality in the gesture is at odds with the slight curve of his shoulders, his down cast eyes.

“Sébastien.” She curves her hand around the crook of his arm and she feels him settle their connection against the side of his body. _God, this feels so silly_. They’re going for coffee, not a Viennese Waltz. But there’s also something kind of thrilling about it, about walking down the street on the arm of a person she adores. She grins up at him, just for a moment and thinks she sees satisfaction on his face. Their shoulders brush against each other as they walk and the linen shirt he’s wearing open over his tee flits against her hip. They don’t say much, but it’s nice, just _being_ with someone.

She does not attempt to explain a mocha to the waiter. She’s learned enough French to order at a cafe, but explaining a mocha to someone who does not believe in them, on principle, is still beyond her. Booker refuses to assist.

Gulls wheel overhead and halyards clank against sailboat masts. Cars and mopeds zip by on the street and locals weave between strolling tourists. Nile’s never really spent time in beachy places before Marseille. The old port bustles with activity, and yet sitting here sipping coffee in the sunshine, Nile feels a lazy warmth settle around her. She feels no need to rush or do anything in particular. She only desires to luxuriate and, for once, she can.

After Booker pays their bill, they stroll along the harbor’s edge, chatting lazily about the book they’ve begun reading, _Passing_ by Nella Larsen. Booker lays out his case for why Irene’s fascination with Clare is a romantic attraction. Nile sees it, she does, the language is intimate, but it seems more complicated than that to her. Irene describes her feelings towards Clare as a “duty” to other Black people, even though Clare, with her light skin and easy charm, has gone and eschewed her own community in favor of a life of luxury with a wealthy white man. Irene both wants Clare’s life and hates Clare’s actions. It’s a maelstrom of conflicting emotions, of attraction, yes, but also betrayal, of longing and also of guilt.

Booker retorts that even if a lot of them were closeted, queer people existed before the 1960’s and sometimes they wrote about it, too.

“Nella Larsen was queer?”

“I could never quite get a read on Nella, but a significant percentage of folks who ran with that crowd in the 20’s in Harlem were, so odds are?”

“Hold the phone, we’ve been reading this book for days and you’re just now mentioning that you _knew_ Nella Larsen?”

He looks at her and squeezes her hand. “Sometimes it’s hard to talk about the past, _cherie_ , even the good parts.”

Which she gets, really, because she’s only told him bits and pieces of her life before Andy dragged her out of a US military base in Afghanistan.

Soon, they stroll between tent covered market stalls with fish laid out on ice in tidy rows. The literal catch of the day. Booker meanders, head swivelling back and forth. Nile doesn’t know what he’s looking for, so she sticks close to his side and tries to take in as many of the sights and sounds and smells as she can. Booker approaches a fishmonger and begins a rapid conversation. He’s bartering and she feels like she’s watching a tennis match between Booker and the other man. Words and numbers volley back and forth and eventually they shake hands and the man scoops a couple of slightly funny, bony looking fish into a bag with some ice. They bounce from stall to stall through the market, the canvas bag over Booker’s shoulder filling with more different kinds of fish than she thought possible. She notices the further they get into the market, the rounder the syllables of Booker’s French become, the more musical and almost Italian sounding to her ear.

When she points this out to him on their way home, he smiles and murmurs, “I wondered if you’d notice.”

She raises her eyebrows at him and waits for him to elaborate.

“The older fisherman still speak Occitan and it’s a surefire way to get the best prices.”

“Occitan?”

“You know how Nicky predates modern Italian?”

“He’s informed me, yes.”

“Ligurian is to Italian what Occitan is to French. I grew up speaking both, and rarely get to use it anymore.”

She squeezes his hand and brushes her shoulder against his. “I like seeing you so happy.”

\---

“How do you feel about bouillabaisse for dinner?”

“Never had it.”

“Come help.”

She comes up behind him and catches sight of the fish, all of today’s purchases spread over the counter.

“Have you ever cleaned a fish?”

“I grew up in a state famous for its cornfields, in a city that reversed the direction of our river because it was so polluted. No. I have never cleaned a fish.”

“Can I show you?”

“Sure.”

So he does. Nile picks it up effortlessly.

He can never bring himself to make this dish for himself. Even if the point of bouillabaisse is to use the rockfish that the bourgeoisie and the restaurateurs have no interest in, it still feels indulgent and selfish to have all this beautiful fresh fish to himself. Sure, he could make it with whatever was at the nearest grocery store, but it’s never quite the same as with fish pulled from the bottom of the Mediterranean just that morning.

The other reason he never makes this for himself is that it takes for-fucking-ever to clean all of the fish. Nicky used to pull him into the kitchen with a “Provence and Liguria are not that different,” place a boning knife in his hand and scowl at him till he picked up his first fish and slid the knife along its underline.

With Nile, the whole endeavor feels different. He knows her cooking well after last summer and it almost always includes a meat-carb-veggie trifecta. Burgers with lettuce and tomato. Roast chicken with potatoes and green beans. Here, they’ve each got a glass of wine on the counter, and they’re standing side by side, with knives and fingers leaving each fish ready to slice up and bring to a boil. When Nile’s cooking she often hums to herself, or puts on music. But tonight it’s just the two of them, talking when conversation bubbles to the surface, calm and focused when it doesn’t.

Later, when they sit down to dinner, she takes a bite and her eyes flutter closed in what appears to be pleasure. There are sparks again in his belly and he tries to dampen them, ignore them, and instead focus on the pride: he can nourish her and she appreciates it, appreciates him.

“Why bouillabaisse tonight?”

He shrugs. “This is what home tastes like.”

“So this the Marseille version of soul food?”

He can’t help but laugh. He’d never thought of it that way, never considered that his feelings towards this dish were an almost ancient part of him.

“I suppose,” he concludes.

“Well, I love it,” she announces with a grin.

“I’m glad.”

Maybe he’s imagining things, but he feels like when she said, “I love it,” she might as well have said “I love you.”

\---

After dinner, she takes charge of washing their dishes. She runs the sponge over measuring spoons and cutting boards and Booker stands at her side with a dishcloth in hand, waiting to scoop up whatever she sets down in the dishrack next.

Ever since her comment about soul food at the start of dinner her mind’s been a vortex of thoughts. She thinks she’s hid it pretty well: this night clearly means something to him and she doesn’t want to disrupt that with her own silly insecurities. But then she picks up a spoon and catches a reflection of herself, round and distorted across the back of it and the words come tumbling unbidden from her mouth.

“Do you remember last summer when you confronted me about being a Marine?”

 _What the fuck, Nile._ Her sponge freezes and she can’t bear to look at him. _What if he doesn’t?_

“I do.” His words are soft, unthreatening.

She swallows, rolls her head back and forth and sets her shoulders. _I guess I’m doing this._

“You said, ‘ _I know how it feels to be betrayed by the people and principles you believed in._ ’ I’ve thought about that a lot.”

“ _Nile_ ,” he breathes out and her eyes snap up to his. Concern worries at his brows and he extends a hand towards her.

She feels the tears stinging at the back of her eyes. She shakes her head and turns back to her washing. She scrubs at a mixing bowl that was mostly clean when she started.

“How fucked up is it that the same damn war that killed my father, killed me too? How fucked up is that we both enlisted because there was no other way to make an ‘honest’ living? That we went into their neighborhoods and their homes and killed them the instant something went a little bit wrong? That we did exactly the same thing to them as the cops in Chicago did to us every damn day?”

She doesn’t know where all these words are coming from. They’re things that she’s thought about from time to time since last summer, since her conversations with Nicky. But she’s never said them aloud before and she feels almost woozy with rage.

She throws down her sponge and bends over at the hips so she can rest her head against her forearms on the counter. After a moment she feels his hand come to rest on her back. Somehow, that slight touch helps her breath a little bit easier, helps her swallow back the tears.

“I honestly don’t know how to live with being both a black woman and an _invader_ for the rest of my life.”

“It’s not your fault, Nile.”

“I know. I _know_ that. I just--” She stands back up, presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. His hand has stayed at her hip.

“The first time I tried to talk to Nicky, he just handed me Paulo Friere’s _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_.”

“ _The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors._ ”

Her eyes widen in surprise at his recognition, and she lets out a gentle laugh. “Yeah. That.”

His hand squeezes at her hip and relief floods through her. She wraps her arm around him and buries her face in the front of his shirt.

She didn’t expect him to know Friere, but of course he does. He probably read it in the original Portugese, too.

She realizes that his line last summer, about knowing what it felt like, wasn’t just about the original pain, it wasn’t just about the revolution he fought for turning into an empire on the backs of its poorest citizens, it wasn’t just about having no choice to go to battle for that imperial army far away from home in a senseless war. It was about this too. The figuring out how to understand your role in it, to contextualize your pain in the pain you caused others. The knowing that this slice of self-loathing is omnipresent.

She thinks back to their conversation in the abandoned mine, where he’d first told her about Jean-Pierre and the hate in his eyes. _Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting._

She tilts her head up to look at him. “It never goes away, does it?”

He shakes his head. She senses the pain in his eyes before he squeezes them shut and pulls her tight against him. “Use it, Nile. Use it for good.”

\---

That evening in bed, with the slight breeze floating over his skin, Booker lies awake, staring up at the ceiling. Nile is curled up against him, an arm thrown across his middle, her breathing slow and intentional like it always is as she tries to fall asleep. Despite the heat, she is a welcome weight.

He thinks about the events of the last month, of telling Nile about Mélanie and his sons, of how her hand felt in his, of cooking together as if they had been doing so for years. He thinks about her promise to take him to Chicago someday, about how she’d doubled over in hurt this evening, about how his throw-away line a year ago had stayed with her and motivated her and started to transform her sense of herself.

He knows she has a kind of power over him, starting from when she’d barked, “No man left behind” and he’d jumped off the hospital bed to follow her. The revelation that it is reciprocal, that she listened to him and decided to change, makes his head spin.

It hits him that he wants, really actively wants, a future with her in it.

His revelation is cut short by her nose snuffling into his side and her arm tightening across his belly.

Her words are so quiet he can barely hear them. “I’m sorry that I ruined tonight.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for--”

“No, I feel bad, Booker. We were having such a good time and it felt so homey, I guess, and then my brain was like ‘you’ve abandoned them completely, haven’t you?’ and then I was thinking of Chicago and all the things that led me to join up and then I was thinking about all the things I did on my tour and how almost none of them were actually good and then…” Her voice cracks and she presses her forehead even more firmly against him. “Just please accept my apology.”

He turns over her words in his mind, considers the way her brain is skipping from one one hurt to another without reprieve.

“I’m not going to accept your apology.” Her head jerks up at that. He sees her eyes narrow with incoming rage, and he continues, trying to pre-empt whatever conclusion she’s come to. “Because I know what that’s like, because I spent years and years trying to live in the spaces between all that guilt and pain. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere and hits harder than you could have possibly imagined. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

She is quiet for a moment, but he feels her relax against him just a bit.

“It feels like I’m forgetting them, already.”

“Tell me about them. Let me help you remember.”

She scoots up the bed and he turns on his side, so that they’re face to face. She has her hands curled in front of her and he threads his fingers through hers.

She takes a big, steadying breath and then begins. “My brother, Jordan, is the absolute biggest nerd. Comic books, _Magic: The Gathering_. He even started trying to learn Japanese so he could watch his favorite anime without subtitles.”

She chuckles fondly at some remembered antics and then continues, telling him about her mom’s mac n’ cheese, about the ladies at church and the braiding salon who were always trying to give her advice on boys or set her up with their sons and grandsons, about her first girlfriend, a soccer teammate, and how everyone just thought they were really good friends because they were too scared to hold hands in public, about her mother’s hugs and bedtime stories, about her father’s chocolate chip cookies.

She talks for what seems like hours and he feels more and more like he knows the people and places of her first life, like when she does take him to Chicago it will already feel familiar.

As the frequency of her yawns begins to tick up, she brings her last story to a conclusion and is silent for a moment.

“Thank you,” she says and then, “same time tomorrow?”

He squeezes her hand. “I’d like that.”

They both drift off to sleep with soft smiles on their faces.

\---

Three days later, Nile’s cell phone vibrates over breakfast. She flips it over and unlocks it and her stomach drops as she reads what’s on the screen.

_A and I are back. J &N will meet you in Bishkek two weeks from today. - Q_   
_PS Say hi to our favorite Frenchman for me?_


	13. The Limit Does Not Exist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much love to marbletopempire, for helping make this chapter much better than it would have been otherwise.

Booker pours himself a cup of coffee, rubs the sleep from his eyes, and joins Nile at the table for breakfast.

She has her nose buried in a book, but she doesn’t glance up, doesn’t even murmur a recognition of his presence. Which is not at all how this exchange has gone any of the countless previous times she’s started her morning before him.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Quỳnh says ‘Hi.’”

Though he is, of course, glad to hear from Quỳnh, this is not an answer to his question.

“Nile.”

Her hand shoots out across the table and she tucks her fingers against his palm. She draws her eyes up to meet his and he sees them darting back and forth, as if unsure that she can look at him. Her shoulders rise with an inhale and then settle with a sharp exhale.

“I have to leave in two weeks.”

He squeezes her hand tighter, ducks his head. He knew this was coming, at some point. It always is with her, with his exile. But damn, he feels like he’s been punched so hard the wind has been knocked out of him.

He doesn’t know what to say. Neither does she. So they sit there in silence, drinking coffee with one hand and clutching at each other.

Two days later, he locks the blue door of his building behind them, wondering how many years, how many decades, it will take before he’s ready to come back, whether Nile will be with him when he does.

\---

They spend the train ride back to Paris reading poetry. Nile has her head resting against Booker’s shoulder and they trade off reading. She adores how Mary Oliver’s words sound in his baritone, how the words roll off his tongue and strike true. They come to the last page and Booker flips back to the poem he insisted that they skip earlier. “ _When Death Comes_.”

Nile can see the words of the title on the page, but she is shaken by them nevertheless. She can still hear his voice, roughed by grief and alcohol, tell her of Jean-Pierre’s hatred. She remembers the tense line of his shoulders when they came upon Phillipe’s grave in the _Cimetière de Montmartre_. She has witnessed his existential despair.

_When it’s over, I want to say: all my life_   
_I was a bride married to amazement._   
_I was the bridegroom, taking the world in my arms._

Nile looks up at him and shivers, yearning for these words to become his own.

_I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world._

He closes the book gently. “That one hits differently now than it ever has before,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.

She leans into him again and they are quiet for a long while, sated with soft words.

As the train pulls into Lyon, the older woman who’s been sitting behind them gets up to reach for her suitcase overhead. Booker notices and stands and lifts the bag down for her. Nile allows herself to look at him, to notice the breadth of his shoulders, the way his button down rides up enough to expose his pale skin. The older woman thanks him profusely. As he sits back down, the woman lays a hand on his shoulder and leans into his ear.

His eyes widen in surprise and he glances up at her and then at Nile and shakes his head slightly as he mumbles a response. The older woman says something else and winks and then she drifts up the aisle toward the exit.

Booker thunks his head into his hands and Nile notes the flush creeping around the collar of his shirt.

“What did she say?” Nile hisses.

He turns his head, just his head, to look at her and then ducks it back into his palms. The pink is pricking at his ears now, too.

“ _Book_.”

“She said we made a very cute couple. I told her that we’re just friends.”

“That’s not so bad.”

He tips his head back against the seat, scrubs his hand down his face.

“The next bit though...”

“Booker, what did she say?”

“‘Well then, what are you waiting for?’ and then she winked. She _winked_.”

Nile thinks her heart might have skipped a beat stumbling over the possibilities of the woman’s words. _Is he…? No, no way._ She turns her face into his shoulder and laughs. “What does she even know?”

“Nothing.” She glances up at him and the look in his eyes, focused wholly on her, burns into her soul.

\---

They’ve been back in Paris for a day, when Nile looks up from his computer and groans.

“I need your help.” It’s almost a whine.

“Of course.”

“Find me someone in this city who can braid my hair who speaks English or Arabic.” She pushes the laptop across the table to him.

“Sure,” he says, and then adds, “for whatever it’s worth, I like your hair like this, too.”

The look she pins him with tells him that this was, in fact, the wrong thing to say.

“So do I, but this,” she says, pointing to the two twists running down either side of her head, ”takes time, time I am no longer going to have in just a couple of days.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t really want to think about where she’ll be going or what she’ll be doing when she gets there, so he makes a sort of non-commital noise in the back of his throat and starts flipping through the tabs Nile has open.

With some basic internet searches and a couple of phone calls, he finds an American expat working in a natural hair salon with an opening in three day’s time.

The morning of her appointment, Nile emerges from their bedroom in the leggings and oversized tee he knows are her washday staples. It’s an outfit he’s seen her in many times before, but there’s something today that snags his eyes and makes them linger. Nile is almost vibrating with excitement, grinning in spite of herself.

“I cannot tell you how pumped I am to have someone else wash my hair for me,” she says as she grabs her backpack from the hook and slips a book into it, something by Meg Cabot she firmly established was _not for sharing_.

They set off across the streets of Paris, and his hand slips into hers. It’s not something he really thinks about any more -- it just happens, feels natural, feels right.

When they arrive outside the big glass windows of the salon, Nile wraps her arms around his shoulders, plants a quick kiss on his cheek.

“See you back at the apartment in a few hours?”

“Of course. Do you need me to come in for anything? Translating?”

She pulls back from him and says, “Trust me, it’s best you don’t.” His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and Nile sees it and chuckles at him. “The ladies in there will eat you alive, white boy.”

He’s not totally sure what that means, but she squeezes his hand and then slips through the door.

\---

_This might just be the best hair care experience of my life_ , Nile thinks as Daniella glides the conditioner through her hair. Daniella -- California native, about Nile’s age -- can keep a conversation going almost no matter how much, or little, Nile has to contribute and that is an excellent feature of someone who’s going to spend the next several hours in her company. More importantly, when Nile explained what she wanted -- fairly large cornrows running straight back from crown to nape -- Daniella just cocked her head and said, “A practical lady. I can dig it.” No push-back, no upselling, no weird BS about how cornrows are “hood” or “inelegant.” Nile didn’t know where or how Booker had found this woman but she was turning into a godsend.

Daniella has just started in on the first of Nile’s braids when the older woman getting her faux-locs installed in the chair across from Nile calls out, “Daniella,” and then a string of rapid French which Nile can’t follow.

Daniella leans down and says to Nile in English, “Béatrice wants to know about your man.”

“My man?”

“The one who dropped you off.”

“Oh, he’s my friend.”

Daniella snorts and practically doubles over in laughter. There are questions flying at them and Daniella shoots something back and suddenly everyone in the salon seems to be laughing. Nile feels the heat building in her cheeks and she wants to turn away, but she can’t fucking move her head because Daniella’s got a grip on a section of her hair.

“Nile, you were holding hands.”

“So?”

“You practically made out with him before you came in.”

“It was a hug.”

The older woman across from her -- Béatrice -- says something again. There is a chorus of “ _oui oui_ ” and “ _c’est vrai_ ” and “ _exactement._ ”

Nile’s not sure if she wants to know, but nope she actually 100% does. “Daniella?”

“She said ‘The way he looked at you was like a newlywed on their honeymoon.’ And she’s not wrong. Nile, your white boy is _smitten_.”

Nile burns with indignation. _How could these people, who’d barely seen them, know anything about them?_ But she’s also spent enough time around aunties and church ladies to know when the situation is hopeless. These women have decided Booker is in love with her and nothing she says will change their minds. She takes solace in the fact that she will never see any of them again. Fine, let her imagined romantic life brighten up their days.

On her walk home, though, she keeps hearing _like a newlywed on their honeymoon_ and _your white boy is smitten_ over and over again in her head.

_Could all the ladies in the salon be wrong?_

Booker is her person, her best friend. At this point, he understands her better than anyone else.

After the Louvre, she’d embraced him to banish her worry and reassure herself that he was there, that they’d really pulled it off. In the housing projects in Marseille, she’d slipped her hand into his because he needed the comfort and support. But it felt right. And It felt good. And they’d kept doing it -- both of them had.

They cooked together. They shared a bed. She made coffee for him in the morning. They read books aloud to each other at night.

She’d spent practically every moment of the last six weeks with him and it didn’t feel like enough.

_This is married people level shit._

_Ho-ly fuck._

Yeah, okay, so that sounded weird in her head, but she found that she was fine with what it meant. More than fine with it, actually.

They were acting all married, except, of course, for the kissing and the romance and the sex.

If Daniella and the ladies at the salon were to be believed, Booker wanted to be hers in every sense of the word. But they could, of course, be seeing what they wanted to see, when the new client shows up on the arm of a man.

Did he really want her like that?

Did she want that, too?

\---

Booker walks along the Seine and wishes it were the sea.

It’s October, but heat is still settled over Paris. It was unseasonably warm in Marseille, too, but he feels it here more oppressively.

He thinks mostly about the three important women in his life. Mélanie, who made a home and a family with him. Andy, who laughed and caroused and commiserated with him. Nile, who saw him and held him and pushed him and, in spite of everything, trusted him with the deepest parts of herself.

His love for Mélanie began in the flurry of youthful attraction. His love for Andy grew from the parallels of their loneliness. With Nile, it was different, sneakier: Quỳnh’s whirlwind of a return had pulled Nile into his life and even after the whirlwind had moved on, Nile had chosen to stay. It was the mundane that made him love Nile, her willingness to time Quỳnh at her lock-picking over and over again, her conviction that chocolate belonged in coffee, her patience, and her fire.

He thinks about waking up each morning with Nile at his side. He thinks about laughing with her in the kitchen, reading with her, nestled together on the couch. He recalls the feel of her hand in the crook of his elbow, her arm around his shoulders, her fingers laced with his. Her life and her experience of the world will always be different than his, but there’s a rightness that settles in him when they’re side by side.

He recalls the moment in the candlelight that first night in Marseille, when he’d thought about kissing her and decided not to. He doesn’t regret that choice, not exactly. Their time in Marseille had been perfect as it was.

But he realizes now how much he wants to give her pleasure in all things, how he wants to make her feel good and loved in all the ways he can.

Nile is leaving in a week.

He is going to be alone, again, in a week.

The last two times he was alone in Paris? Well, Nile would probably describe them as not cute. That would be charitable.

All he wants is more time.

\---

When Nile returns to the apartment late in the afternoon, she finds it filled with the aromas of garlic and onions and Booker at the stove.

She runs her hand up and down his back and lays her head against his arm as he pokes the veg around in the pan.

“Nice time?” he says, looking down at her.

She feels her cheeks heat a little bit and hopes he doesn’t notice. “Yeah, it was. Thank you.”

“Of course, _ma cherie_.”

He wraps his free arm around her. She leans into his solid warmth.

And then it hits her. _Ma cherie._

Daniella had regaled her with a story of her first date with a French boy and how she had looked up all these nicknames to try to be romantic and he’d just ended up laughing at her because “ _mon lapin_ ” was cute, like for a kid, not cute like for the person you were wooing.

He’d called her _ma cherie_ , my darling. And it wasn’t the first time. It’d started in Marseille, maybe?

_Oh._

_Oh this was SO happening._

Hours later, after dinner and dishes, she stands in front of his bookshelves. They’ve just finished the collection of Sharon Olds’ poems they had started on the train, and she’s in search of something new, something they can finish in a week.

Booker comes up to stand behind her and he settles his hand on the curve of her lower back. He’s done this before, of course, but this time it sparks something in her, a slow ache between her legs.

He leans forward and pulls a book off the shelf. “Maybe _A Wrinkle in Time_? It’s a children’s book, which means we could finish it, and Joe gave it to me a while back -- said it was whimsical -- I’ve never read it…”

_God, he’s cute._

She puts her hand on his waist and turns to face him. “Sébastien,” she says softly and his gaze flicks to her. “Kiss me?”

He tosses _A Wrinkle in Time_ onto the bookshelf and then his hand is at her neck and he is bending towards her. There’s a small moment where she feels their breath join together and then his lips press against hers and then again and again and it is _everything_.

He pulls back and she runs a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck.

“That-- I-- I want to keep doing that,” she breathes.

“Me too.”

They’re both grinning so much that their next kiss is more like mashing faces together than really kissing and she feels a little bit like a fool, but a very happy fool. Eventually, they get their act together and she teases his bottom lip and they open their mouths to one another. Nile feels all of the things at once, the shivers at the back of her neck from his beard rubbing against her skin, the curl of arousal in her gut, the giddiness of kissing this person she likes so much and the anticipation of kissing him again.

Somehow they find their way to the couch. She straddles his lap and his hands settle low on her hips. With her hands in his hair and his lips on hers, she feels like she could do this forever and never tire of it. She sinks lower into his lap and presses herself against his chest and his head plunks against her shoulder and he breathes “ _Nile_ ,” reverent and hungry at the same time. It sets something off inside her, a power over him she holds close and careful, a want for him that sings through her veins.

He starts kissing down her neck, a new, exquisite thrill. She rubs herself against him again, seeking his sensation, wanting to feel all of him.

He groans against her skin and his grip tightens on her hips. And then he’s pressing his forehead into her shoulder and pushing her away from him, just a bit.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he whispers.

She takes his head in both her hands and drags his face where she can see it. “Do what, Booker?”

“You’re leaving,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “And God do I want to, but if we do anything more right now, it might just break me in a week, when you’re gone and never coming back.”

She closes her eyes at his words, the wretchedness in his voice, and feels pain squeeze at her heart.

“Sébastien.” Nothing. Not even a flutter of an eyelash. “ _Sébastien_ , look at me.” His eyes pull open slowly, almost warily. Her heart clenches again and it kills her that he still doesn’t know. “I’ll be back. As soon as I can, I’ll be back. I promise.”

“Oh Nile.” He curls into her, arms wrapping around her back, head tucked against her chest. She feels his breathing hitch and shudder, feels her shirt grow damp where his face is pressed. Her arms twist about his shoulders and she lays a kiss into his hair and breathes him in, the salt and musk after a warm Paris day.

She feels the tears roll down her cheeks, too.

They were so close to something wondrous.


	14. Peripeteia, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note:  
> There is reference made to the antisemitic canard of blood libel and Booker has a panicy reaction to it. The situation is a misunderstanding that resolves easily. Skip the paragraph beginning "Pesach nears..." if you wish to avoid. See the end notes for more detail and historical context.
> 
> My undying gratitude to marbletopempire.
> 
> Much love and many thanks to nevermindirah, for expanding and nuancing my understanding of Jewish history and traditions.

_**The following winter** _

Booker’s laptop sits open on his kitchen table, pinging at random intervals, as he hurries to pour himself a cup of coffee. He tips a little bit of whiskey into his mug -- just enough to barely taste it -- and returns to his seat.

The discussion boards are popping this morning and he doesn’t want to miss out.

His first post had been a whim. Aching in Nile’s absence, he recalled her coming back from the salon, glowing with happiness and confidence. Even though that night had ended in heartbreak, sobbing in her arms, he still recalled her cozying up to him at the stove, her grin.

It was a small thing, stupid really, but he wanted to honor that day, honor her. He found an online discussion board for American expats living in Paris and wrote a short little note about how great Daniella had been to his…

He stewed over it for hours, but he eventually decided on the thing that would probably attract the least amount of attention, regardless of whether it was true.

… his _girlfriend’s_ ... natural hair.

To his surprise, people actually liked his post, sent him -- well, sent the user known as BookendBourbon -- grateful messages. And it felt nice? Booker didn’t want to think too hard about that.

A couple weeks later, during a walk around his neighborhood that had turned into hours wandering Paris in the cold, steady rain which seemed to have become commonplace, he stumbled into a small little cafe. He glanced up at the writing over the counter and noted that they actually had a mocha on the menu. He thought of Nile immediately, that he should bring her here, just to see her reaction. His next thought was that he should make sure the expats on the message board knew about this place. The reaction to his post staggered him. Though it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, every American expat in Paris seemed to crave chocolate in their coffee just as Nile had. These were Nile’s people, and he decided they could become his too. He could be both just a name on a screen and someone real people really appreciated. It felt almost too good to be true.

In the weeks since then, BookendBourbon had become a fixture on the message board. People sought him out for recommendations, tagged him in their posts, pulled him into conversations he never would have started.

He woke up each morning knowing that there were people out there who he could make a difference to, in some small way.

Sometimes he feels silly, pouring so much of his time into the pixels on his computer screen. Sometimes he thinks of the alternative, of the endless intoxication and self-flagellation. Being alone, after a summer spent in Nile’s constant company, hurts like hell. The random moments, when his eyes alight on something she’d left behind in his apartment, or a taste or smell triggers a memory from their summer, stab at his guts repeatedly. He doesn’t do well with pain, needs a distraction for it. He thinks about that day when she’d dragged him to the cafe and kicked him in the shins. _We need a mission_ , she’d said. She was right. Being an internet message board all-star isn’t a mission exactly, but it is a distraction. It’s something.

And then, one day, user BartonSprings posts about his woes finding a fully bilingual replacement teacher at the school he works at because it’s mid-year and all the teachers worth hiring already have jobs. Booker has chatted with BartonSprings a fair amount, knows he’s a history teacher from Texas who followed his wife to Paris 15 years ago and misses barbeque more than anything else. Bart’s a nice guy, funny, sincere.

It’s an utterly crazy idea, crazier than painting the forgery of Erasmus or executing a heist at the Louvre. But Bart’s post sparks something in him and maybe, just maybe, he can pull it off.

\---

Two weeks later, in a brand new blazer, Booker stands before his first class of students and panics. He hasn’t talked to anyone resembling a teenager in how many decades? Fifteen maybe?

_You can’t forge or shoot or explode your way out of this one, Le Livre, now can you?_

And then he remembers Philippe’s idealism and Jean Pierre’s questions, Nile’s heated opinions on the books they read together. He remembers talking to Nicky about the beat poets, Joe, the solar system, Andy, climate change. Most of all, he remembers Quỳnh, and the five hundred years of history she learned from him in a summer. Before him are twenty young Phillipes and Jean Pierres and Niles and Joes and Nickys and Andys and Quỳnhs. They are people. He knows how to talk to people. He brushes his fingers over where the two pieces of metal lay flat against his chest. He can do this.

And he does.

\---

A month or so after he starts, Bart, now Booker’s department chair, calls out to him as he’s headed to the stairwell at the end of the day.

“Mr. Riviere!” Bart’s Texas accent gets more pronounced when he’s being affable. “Get outta here and get some rest.”

“Of course, sir.”

Booker smiles and waves and continues on.

He has no intention of getting any rest. He leaves the school building each day long after the students have departed, orders take out on his walk to the Métro, gets home and marks papers till he passes out around 9pm. Most nights he’s so tired he barely misses the comforting weight of Nile’s head on his shoulder, her arm on his chest. He’s begun waking at 4am, at what Nile would refer to as “stupid o’clock,” long before the sun rises at this time of year. In those wee hours of the morning the world coalesces around his computer screen, his coffee maker, and the lesson plans he needs to create for that day. He’s teaching the second half of the two year world history sequence, and a course on contemporary European history and politics. Everything in his curricula are things he’s lived through, in one way or another. Each morning, figuring out how to translate the dates and events from their textbooks into something that might matter to his young students, he sometimes thinks that maybe _this_ is what his immortality was meant for.

He gets to the Christmas Holiday before he realizes that he doesn’t remember the last time he had a glass of whiskey. He decides that’s a sign, places the bottle of good bourbon up on his highest shelf and pours the rest of his bottles of swill down the drain.

But for the first time in months, he doesn’t have anything to do, anywhere to be. He spends the first two days of vacation curled up on his couch, clutching at her dog tags and missing her. He wonders what he would get Nile for Christmas, wonders about her family’s small, meaningful traditions. He wonders if they’ll ever spend a Christmas together, if he’ll ever have the opportunity to learn these things.

As always, his mind winds around that day Nile went to the salon, the night they kissed for the first time. He can’t bear to think about a lot of it, but he recalls Nile slipping a Sarah Dessen novel into her bag on the way out the door. She’d been funny about it, keeping those books to herself, something about nostalgia. But she’d left the last one on the nightstand on her side of the bed.

A couple of days and several internet searches later, Booker enters his favorite bookshop with a list of authors and titles. The clerk who rings him up comments on “the lucky teenager” in his life. Booker leaves the store with a bag full of novels with covers popping with pinks and teals, all for him.

By the end of his Christmas Holiday, he has developed a dedicated set of opinions on the hit teen romance novels of the mid to late 2000’s.

\---

After school one day in March, he’s got a couple of students hanging out in his classroom. Booker gave up the pretense of trying to mark any papers minutes ago. The students are sitting on the tables, swinging their legs back and forth and begging for one of his “famous stories.” He has realized that he’s got a limited supply of plausible tales he can use with his students and so, as a delaying tactic, he strikes a bargain.

“Tell me more about the Model UN conference in the Hague first,” he says, “and then maybe you’ll get a story.”

One of the boys has just launched into a description of the way the Peru in his committee (actually a kid from Berlin) accidentally got these power-delegates from schools in London and the US on his resolution and their infighting tanked... when Bart knocks on the door frame to his classroom.

Booker shoos the students out and then Bart says, “Wanted to give you a heads up that contracts for next year go out in mailboxes tomorrow and you’ll be getting one, too. I know we brought you on board as a replacement, but you’ve been great and the dean and I would be delighted to have you back.”

He’s sure he can barely contain the surprise on his face. “Thank you, sir.”

“Your lesson plans are stellar and students love you. There are a lot of teachers who do a whole hell of a lot worse.”

As Booker rides the Métro home that evening, he sorts through the novelty of planning for the future. If he wants to, he can choose to stay in Paris and hold down a full time job, and not think about anything other than what he’s going to teach tomorrow for an entire year.

He decides before the train pulls to a halt at his station, that the monotony of that sounds delightful.

He signs the contract the moment he pulls it from his mailbox the next day. He thinks Nile would be proud.

\---

Spring dawns, but the weather stays cloudy and cold. It makes him miss Marseille and the easy way they’d walked the streets, hand in hand.

Pesach comes and one of his colleagues at school invites him to their seder. He hasn’t been to seder, hasn’t celebrated Passover since Mélanie’s death, but he accepts the invitation and he goes. He gets nervous standing on their doorstep, that this will be strange without his sons, different somehow in someone else’s home, in a post-Holocaust world. It is uncomfortable at first: he’s the only single person there older than fifteen and his hostess offers him red wine and he feels his heart rate sky-rocket and his vision blur and _holy shit blood libels are dangerous, murderous things is this a fucking trick?_ but then she pulls another bottle from the table and says, “white?” and he says, “yes, thank you,” and can breathe again.

But upon hearing the four questions, the explanation for why this night is different than all other nights, his mind settles, feels comfortable and warm. The words and songs come back to him; the Hebrew, long buried, is still there. He laughs and grins as the children race around the house in search of the afikoman, recalling the time a very little Jean Pierre discovered it on the lowest shelf of the bookcase and wandered back to the table with the matzo in his chubby hands and a grin on his face. It might’ve been the only time he beat his older brothers.

The people and the details are different than the last time he did this, but in a world that is almost unrecognizable to the one he was born to, this celebration of springtime and survival is largely the same.

He suddenly wishes Nile was here, to learn and see this part of him that he barely remembers himself.

Summer approaches and he starts to worry that he hasn’t heard from her. He knows that this is their curse, that neither of them know when she will find her way back to him. Another summer is probably too much to hope for. He hopes anyways.

In his weakest moments, just before sleep overtakes him, he remembers the feel of her lips on his, the way his hands felt against her waist and her hips, how she pushed her body against his. He remembers how much she had wanted him.

He runs his fingers over her dog tags against his chest and burns with want for her in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Passover traditions are many and varied. One which many Sephardic Jews observe is the practice of only serving white wine at seder because red wine resembles blood and blood libels -- the false claims made by Christians that Jews required the blood of Christian children to complete their rituals, including the baking of matzos -- were a common element of Jewish persecution. For instance, the Spanish Inquisition likely fabricated cases of blood libel to facilitate the persecution and expulsion of Jews. Though I'm not willing to claim that Booker must be Sephardi, it's historically plausible and regardless the symbolism around blood libels is definitely something he would be aware of. Many contemporary Jews, however, serve both red and white wine at seder for reasons of taste and variety -- hence the inadvertent misunderstanding. 
> 
> Additionally, if you have good reason to think that Booker's family wouldn't have hidden the afikoman for the children to find as part of their seder, please don't tell either me or nevermindirah: let us keep the image cute lil Jean Pierre beating his overly aggressive older brothers.


	15. Peripeteia, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- In this chapter the team tries to fight China's persecution and basically genocide of Uighur Muslims, a minority ethnic group in western China. There are references throughout to "reeducation" facilities, which many Western observers liken to "concentration camps," as well as a brief reference to practices which reports suggest might take place in these facilities.  
> \- The team faces and engages in canon-typical violence, similar to the raid in South Sudan and the kill-floor scene in the movie.
> 
> Many, many thanks to marbletopempire, whose feedback spawned this entire chapter and the story is better because of it.
> 
> Shout out as well to nevermindirah's great fic [I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315082/chapters/66738073) for its discourse on what it means to "do good" in the world in the 21st Century for our immortal friends and how complicated it can be, which inspired a lot of what goes on in Nile's head in this chapter.

Nile fucking _hates_ smuggling.

She hates the secrecy and the quiet. She hates being awake all night and sleeping away the days. She hates referring to other human beings like objects or cargo. She hates constantly feeling like everything is a moment away from blowing up in their faces.

Nile has forgotten what it means to be warm. She and Quỳnh have spent weeks in the mountains between western China and Kyrgyzstan ferrying groups of Uighurs across the border. This part of the world is drier and rockier than Afghanistan. The wind cuts through every piece of clothing Nile owns during the day and the temperatures drop precipitously every sunset. Nile and Quỳnh take turns on watch while their travelers catch some sleep. As she lays herself out on hard stone each morning, curled under a thin blanket, she misses Booker’s heat around her, his arm across her shoulder or back. After the most stressful nights hiking through the mountains, Nile sometimes even thinks she would be willing to trade all the doing good in the world for more nights spent in the utter safety of his embrace.

She knows that they are making a difference. A couple of times Nile and Quỳnh have snuck into the towns they send their travelers to, just to watch the relief and reunions. She sees the way their travelers accept a blanket on the floor of a cave as if it is a luxury they do not deserve. She sees how it takes their travelers several hard and cold nights before they shake their perfect, quiet obedience. Some of them never do.

Maybe her summer of lounging with Booker has made her soft. Or maybe this is just really really fucking hard.

\---

_**Two months earlier** _

Nile steps outside the airport terminal in Bishkek and immediately makes a 180 degree turn to go back inside. She’d left Paris on a balmy fall afternoon and landed in Kyrgyzstan in a literal snowstorm. It is weather whiplash and she is not dressed for it at all.

She notices a man bundled against the snow step out of one of the cars lining the road and make a break for the doors to the terminal. Once inside he pulls down his hood and--

“Nicky!”

She throws her arms around him and he squeezes her close.

“Come,” he says. “Joe is waiting ever so impatiently.”

Nile feels fondness wash over her.

Even on winding mountain roads, Joe drives fearlessly, and they arrive at the secluded cabin much more quickly than Nile would have expected. Though perhaps she cannot _only_ blame Joe’s driving, for the whole car ride was filled with stories of Joe and Nicky’s summer in Portugal -- lots of sun and beaches and wine and seafood -- and presumably sex, though they leave those bits out. She tells them of her time in France. Or at least as much of her summer as she feels she can tell them, carefully maneuvering around Booker shaped spaces: visiting the Louvre, tasting Bouillabaisse in Marseille, trying to understand the inequities of modern France. It is all true. But it also isn’t the truth.

\---

Nile shivers her way through dinner that night. Joe teases her about having lost her Chicago heartiness to the seduction of the Mediterranean. She objects, because as the little sister that is her job. Privately, though, she agrees with him. It’s just some snow. _What’s the big deal, Freeman?_

Nile listens to Andy rhapsodize about the horses they spent the summer with, laughs as Quỳnh describes trying to learn how to shoot a gun while riding. Joe and Nicky tag-team a story about discovering a price fixing ring on Porto’s eponymous dessert wine and taking the bastards down.

Nile sips at her own glass of red and grins at their stories and their antics. She loves them. Really, she does. But she also keeps wanting to lean into a solid presence at her side, or share her own hijinx, and she can’t, and it’s _killing_ her.

Eventually she excuses herself from the table, claiming jet lag and a long day.

Minutes after she’s collapsed into the bed in her room, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Quỳnh, who shuts the door quietly behind her, and comes to sit beside Nile.

“I had a wager going with myself about whether you’d come back at all,” she says.

“You’re my family. We’ve got a mission. Of course I’d be here.”

Quỳnh lays a hand on Nile’s shoulder, on her side. “He’s your family, too,” she says softly. “And I’m sorry that you’re having to make a choice.”

Nile nods. They stay there in silence for a moment. Her mind reels.

“Do the others know?”

Quỳnh snorts. “I’m sure they suspect. You spent four months in France and it’s not that interesting a place unless there’s something else keeping you there. But no, even I don’t really know, more of an educated guess.”

Nile smiles at that. “You’re right.”

“The whole summer.”

Nile nods.

“And you didn’t just _visit_ the Louvre, did you?”

Nile shakes her head and absolutely grins.

“Please tell me the two of you fucked.”

With that, something breaks inside of Nile. The tears burst forth, pouring, heaving out of her. Quỳnh pulls Nile into her lap and arms, presses her face against her shoulder and holds her. The sobs come so rapidly, Nile can barely remember to breathe. She desperately tries to get all of the emotions of the last weeks expelled from her body: the surety of his companionship, the thrill of his kiss, the pain of their separation that evening, the awkwardness of their last days together dancing around whatever it was between them, and now the heartache of trying to hide all of it. When she finally bats the last tears away from her cheeks, she feels spent and numb.

“I can’t believe I’m crying over a _boy_.” Nile huffs a laugh that turns into a hiccup.

Quỳnh cups the nape of her neck, catches her eyes. “You love him, Nile, and nobody will ever take that away from you.”

\---

The first days in the one bedroom apartment in Kashgar are filled with the frantic energy of a new mission. Joe and Quỳnh and Andy do most of their recon, since Nicky and Nile both stick out amongst the locals. Nile acts as Nicky’s spotter when he’s tasked with providing long range cover, but most of her time is spent sorting through the intel the other three bring back. Which schools are serving as fronts for “reeducation” of Uighurs, which neighborhoods and mosques are the current targets for government raids, which families have lost breadwinners, which streets and markets are the focus of digital and human surveillance.

Quỳnh finally gets inside one of the camps, and the photos and video and reports she brings back set all of them on edge. Rote chanting in Mandarin. Beatings. Even a forced renunciation of faith that sends Joe careening into the bedroom and Nicky running after him.

As much as Nile wants to bust into each of these reeducation centers, these prisons, guns blazing and ready to burn it all down, she knows this is Marine thinking. The end of incarceration doesn’t equal liberation. Violence rarely begets peace.

She also knows they’re not going to be able to save everyone. The five of them are specs of dust against the machinery of the Chinese state.

Joe returns from _Salat al-Jumu’ah_ , Friday prayers, with an idea: “we alone can’t end the persecution, but we can save Uighur culture.” Joe explains that there are small Uighur communities across China’s western borders, in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and even Pakistan. If they can get as many people as possible across the mountains and out of China, then, no matter how far China takes their persecution, at least the ethnic group will survive.

Quỳnh bristles at the idea. “What about the people who are trapped? In cages?”

“There are more than twenty centers across the region,” says Andy, her voice steady, business like. “We hit any one of them and China comes back the next day and slaps that town and those families with movement restrictions, random searches, closing the local _masjid_.”

Quỳnh stands abruptly and there is rage radiating from every inch of her. “So you’re going to leave them all trapped, huh? Abandon them, just like me?”

Quỳnh stalks off and the bedroom door slams shut. Andy sinks her head into her hands. The silence builds. Nile looks at Joe and Nicky, takes in the haunting in their expressions. None of them seem to know what to say.

Eventually, Joe lays a hand on Andy’s arm and murmurs, “It was my idea. I can go try to talk to her.”

Andy’s head snaps up at that. “No. I will.” And she slips off to the bedroom to face Quỳnh.

Many, many hours later, with hair torn out and tears shed and harsh words spoken and then taken back, they all come to an agreement. And so their smuggling operation begins, ferrying elders, cultural and religious leaders, the best home cooks, those still skilled in traditional crafts, young families out of China.

Nile returns from her first trip across the mountains and collapses onto the couch, spent and numb. These people are willingly leaving their ancestral homelands on the hope and prayer that another government will leave them enough alone to allow their culture to survive. Her ancestors were not given a choice about leaving their homelands, but she wears the name Freeman proudly, a reminder that they made it to the North, to freedom, and to something better. She hopes the men and women she’s walked beside will be able to do the same.

Right now, though, she desperately wants a hug. She knows any of them would gladly hold her, comfort her if she asked, but this is hard, on all of them. She sees Nicky and Joe, and Andy and Quỳnh finding solace in each other’s embrace and she gets it, because the thing she wants most in the world right now is his big damn hand in hers, his beard scratching against her neck, the solidness of his head resting on her chest, listening to her heartbeat. And she gets it, too, when Joe follows Nicky into the bedroom, or Quỳnh tugs at Andy, the squirming underneath the skin that’s aching to be touched and rubbed and kissed away by someone who understands both your pain and your pleasure.

\---

Nile hates the smuggling, but she keeps pushing, keeps going. _This is good. I am doing good._

Just before parting with their most recent group of travelers, Aynur, one of the older women, presses a small handbound bound book into her palm, and mutters the words _I hope you find someone to share this with, God willing._

That night, Nile opens the book and discovers love poems in classical Arabic inside, illustrated and adorned in the margins by an unknown hand. Her heart clenches as she opens the cover to find a handwritten inscription: _My wife, my love-- I am yours, always. Ehmet._

She presses the little book against her chest, closes her eyes, bows her head. The emotions and words feel stuck in her throat. She is grateful, of course, for the gift, gratified that Aynur was thankful for Nile’s help. She knows Aynur’s husband fell into the clutches of Chinese reeducation. She knows Aynur considers herself a widow. Aynur lost everything that matters, family, home, country. Now, on the brink of a new life of trying to revitalize Uighur culture and traditions, she has chosen to give this last attachment away, but to do so with hope and optimism and grace.

_I hope you find someone to share this with, God willing._

The thing is, Nile has found someone to share this with and, right now, she can’t. Booker is miles and miles away and she will be here, fighting for people like Aynur, for as long as it takes.

Usually both she and Quỳnh sleep like the dead the night after they drop off a group of travelers. This time Nile watches the sun slip below the horizon, watches Quỳnh’s eyes slip shut across from her. Nile lays there, with the little book between her hands, curled up against the cold. She aches for him. She longs for his breath on her shoulder, his small snort of a laugh. She misses the way he really listens to her, with his eyes and his attention and his care. She wants the ease of sharing space with him, the small touches and smiles.

She wants to share Aynur’s book with him, to write her own inscription underneath the original.

She imagines a man’s hands writing out his favorite poems, carefully drawing flowers and vines and birds and suns and stars and moons all around them, sewing the pages together and into the stiffened goat’s leather cover. She calls them Ehmet’s hands, but she knows she is picturing Booker’s, broad and capable and gentle.

She realizes that Ehmet loved and created and celebrated, brought beauty and joy into the world and gave it selflessly to others despite enduring pain and hardship. She realizes that Sébastien Le Livre and Anyur’s husband are two versions of the same man. Maybe Ehmet also hid his artwork behind the television or scrunched up all bashfully when praised for it.

Nile’s aching turns to fury.

All these months of walking in the mountains, listening to vague, painful allusions to husbands and wives and children lost to “reeducation,” it hadn’t been real. She’d convinced herself that she’d been doing good. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

She spends the rest of the trip back to Kashgar figuring out how she’s going to explain this to the rest of them.

\---

Nile looks at the four passive faces around the table and explodes.

“What don’t you understand about _we are complicit in their suffering_? We are letting China take innocent people away from their homes every single day just for daring to speak their native language or pray in the way they want to. And you sit there and _pretend_ we are doing enough because now China has less of a chance of totally eradicating their culture.”

Nile huffs. Throws up her hands.

“Quỳnh’s been inside the reeducation centers. We know what’s going on. We know that those who’ve returned from reeducation are radically different people than when they left. We know that plenty of people don’t come back at all, that children are being raised without parents. We know all of this and are choosing to do _nothing_ about it.”

“You know how it works, Nile.” That’s Andy, the frustration tight in her voice. “China has eyes everywhere. The risk of retaliation is too high.”

“We agreed from the beginning we couldn’t save them all, and we wouldn’t try,” adds Nicky. “That some things are too much, even for us.”

Nile glances around at them. Joe is very pointedly studying his hands folded together on the table. Nicky and Andy are looking at each other, having some kind of silent communication. Quỳnh, though. Quỳnh has that gleam in her eye, like when she was learning to pick locks. Determination with a hint of chaos.

“Andromache.” With one word, Quỳnh has everyone’s undivided attention. “You said to me, months ago, that we would reconsider our approach if something changed.” She pauses and her eyes land on Nile. So do everyone else’s. Nobody has yet asked Nile what caused this change of heart, this outburst. But Nile also knows Quỳnh is a sharp observer of people and it was just the two of them walking together for days when Nile was silent and moody, sleeping alongside each other when Nile had the little book pressed between her palms.

“Nile and I will draw up a plan,” she continues. “Reject that on its merits, fine, but let us at least try.”

\---

A week and a half later, Nile takes a bullet to the shoulder, which, no matter how many times it happens, fucking hurts like hell. The reeducation center guard who shot her gets a bullet perfectly between his eyebrows in return.

Nile grabs the key ring from the guard’s belt and tosses it to Joe, who begins working on the next cellblock over. She takes point on leading a group of Uighurs out of the building, with Quỳnh and Nicky holding the rear.

Once outside, they deposit the group into Andy’s care with the vans ready to take them back to town, to their families and their lives.

Nile hears tires begin to roll against gravel as she turns with her team back to the building. The nearest police precinct is 20 minutes away. Nile glances at her watch, it’s been 7 minutes since Quỳnh set the explosives and they made the entry. She breaks into a jog and the other three follow.

\---

It’s a 10 hour drive south across the desert to their next location in Hotan. They debrief in the car, go through that night’s mission plans. Andy and Joe make some calls confirming the busses and vans they’ll be needing. They take turns driving and napping. Nicky and Joe sleep curled around each other in the trunk of the minivan. Quỳnh laces her fingers through the hair at Andy’s neck as she drives. Nile leans her head against the window and finally drifts off to sleep, imagining the old harbor of Marseille.

\---

Night Two in Hotan goes smoothly. So does Night Three in Kizilsu and Night Four near Kashgar and Night Five at a different center in Hotan.

As they drive back north across the desert to Aksu, Nile feels a mixture of elation and exhaustion. Five of the reeducation centers are now functionally closed. Hundreds of people are back in their homes and communities, with their families. This won’t end China’s persecution. It doesn’t magically heal the trauma of forced separation and attempted brainwashing. But people are no longer in cages against their will. Ehmets and Aynurs are back together loving and living and figuring out how to carry on, together, instead of alone.

It’s a bittersweet thought, though. As the one leading them into combat, she has to be strong for the rest of them. Her team. Her family. And so on this slightly macabre version of a family road trip, _she_ is having to figure out how to carry on, alone.

\---

Night Six gets off to a bad start.

The guard roster seems to have been doubled for the evening. Nicky has to take out two sets of perimeter guards, rather than just one.

There’s a moment of hesitation before they move in. All their eyes fall on Nile, and Nicky murmurs, “Boss?” Their shared question hangs in the silence. _Do we keep going or back out now and regroup?_

“Let’s move in,” she says. And, because they trust her, they do.

Nile runs through the plan in her head as they jog towards the fence, re-adjusting for more guards, more surveillance. She squares her shoulders. More guards means more casualties. She feels a small flare of emotion that she quickly tamps down. They can still help the Uighurs inside, get them out, get them home.

Quỳnh’s explosives go off. As the smoke begins to clear, Nile turns, raises her weapon, makes the entry. Her team falls in behind her.

The first thing Nile notices is that the hallway is filled with people. The second thing is the spray of bullets hitting her skin.

Her body sways and drops like a leaf falling to the ground, slow and twisting.

Before the pain overwhelms everything, fear shoots through her like lightning. First, _Nothing that lives, lives forever_ and then _Please, God, let me see him again..._

\---

Somehow, they make their way back at their little minivan, covered in blood, but alive and whole. Nile’s not totally sure quite how it all happened, but between the handguns and the bladed weapons, and Andy coming in as back-up with her Labrys swinging, they got out. The Uighurs they were trying to save didn’t.

Joe pulls out the rags and the washing basin, Nicky the water and the spare clothes. Quỳnh tends to the scratches and bruises Andy’s acquired, though her patient squirms and growls and bats at her hands.

Nile rubs a damp cloth over her face and shoulders and neck. She closes her eyes.

It turns out fighting ethnic cleansing conducted by an authoritarian surveillance state is… maybe the most exhausting thing Nile has ever done.

She knows, intellectually, that dismantling systems is lengthy, complex work. Like racism isn’t gone just because the American Civil Rights movement happened. But doing this work every day, seeing people scared for their lives and their loved ones and their culture, seeing them beaten and tortured and broken. God, it’s _hard_. And right now her emotions are strung together by the thinnest of threads and she feels like an absolute and abject failure.

They’re eight months into this mission and it feels like they’ve barely scratched the surface.

\---

The drive back to Kashgar crackles with silence. Everyone’s tetchy after a mission goes south.

When they get back to the apartment, Nile pulls out her book, a translation of _The Counterfeiters_ that she’s been reading and re-reading during their months in China. The last time she read it, she realized she doesn’t actually _like_ this book, but it is one of Booker’s favorites. She’s come to see him in its words and characters and she likes it, at least, for that.

“You all can shower first,” she says, and sits down at the table with the book.

She thumbs through the pages, unreading, lost in her senses. The feel of the paper, the smell of the pages and the glue binding them together, the corners of the cover rounded from the hard wear of her backpack, from the occasional encounters with tea or rain. She vaguely hears the shower shut off and start up again, the door close behind someone going out to get food. She chews at her bottom lip and she feels where the blood is drying and stiffening just under the collar of her shirt. She feels like her thoughts are circling around her head, and her mind is too exhausted, too weak to reel them in.

Nile startles when she hears her name called and then, “We tried to leave a little bit of hot water.”

Nile stands and pads into the little bathroom. She glances at herself in the mirror. Even if the water will be cold by the end, fuck it, she’ll feel better if she washes her hair.

She steps into the shower, lets the water run down her head and her back, sees it turned dusty red as it pools around the drain at her feet. She scrubs at her skin, works the shampoo into her hair and then rinses it out.

She turns the water off, steps into the steamed up room. The mirror is fogged over, but she takes a moment to look at herself in it anyways. It strikes her that her reflection looks like she feels. She recognizes herself, the round face and strong forehead, the tight peaks of her breasts, the swell of her hips, but it feels obscured, untouchable. Like she resembles herself, but also isn’t.

She shrugs on her robe and then swabs at the condensation on the mirror, clearing it, so she can see what she’s doing as she conditions her hair. Then under the plastic cap it goes and she sets an alarm on her watch for twenty minutes. She sits on the closed lid of the toilet, leans back against the tank. Weariness pulls at her and she allows herself to succumb to it.

She emerges from the bathroom sometime later clean, but hardly rejuvenated.

The other four are at the table. She sits down to join them, takes one look at the rice dish one of them has cobbled together and wants nothing to do with any of it.

She pushes her plate away, says, “Save me some for later,” and then pulls at the blanket that lives at the end of the couch that she thinks of as “hers” in their one bedroom flat.

She’s about to wrap the blanket around her shoulders and pull it over her head when she hears, “Nile.” It’s Nicky’s voice, soft and hard all at once. She glances up.

“Take the room tonight,” he says. “It looks like you need it.”

She flinches away from his pity. “I’m fine.”

“Boss, come on,” says Joe. “Sleep in the damn bed for once.”

“Don’t--” Nile’s voice cracks on the word. “Please, don’t call me that right now.” She sits there, frozen to the pleather of the couch, staring at her hands, unable to _think_.

A hand on her face, small and soft, jolts her. Quỳnh’s brown eyes swim before her own. “Sometimes,” she says, so just the two of them can hear, “no matter how much it hurts, _trying_ is the best that we can do.”

\---

The next morning, Nile wakes up in the center of the bed, in the same position she fell asleep in, curled around the spare pillow.

She clutches it closer to her and it is just all wrong, cold rather than warm, squishy rather than solid, inanimate rather than alive.

This disappointment hits and then the despair and then a realization about everything that’s happened in the last day. _I get it._

When Nile met Andy, she was all cynicism and hard-edged regret. When she met Booker, he was drunk and lonely and self-loathing and in the process of trying to burn his life to the ground.

Whatever’s happening inside of her right now feels like a mix of all of that.

Andy’s had thousands of years. Booker’s had hundreds. For her, this is year three.

She realizes then that the mission isn’t done, but she is.

Before she walks out of the apartment in Kashgar the next day, she leaves her team, her family, with two directives. First, that their next mission must involve bringing down unequivocally bad people somewhere that is not China. Second, that they are not to contact her until they’ve figured out what the next mission is, and no sooner than two months from now.

Later that day, Nile stands at the side of a makeshift airfield in the desert outside Kashgar and shivers despite the full sun. _Has she ever once felt truly warm since she landed in Bishkek?_

As the little plane bounces down on the other side of the border with Kyrgyzstan, the first step in her journey west, she thinks, _I’m coming for you, Sébastien Le Livre._


End file.
